A Skype app for BREW-based Verizon Wireless handsets, such as the Samsung Reality and LG enV Touch and Chocolate, is now available. Verizon already offers such an app for Android and BlackBerry devices.
Verizon Wireless and Skype are expanding the handsets options on which
Verizon customers can download and run Skype's voice-over IP (VOIP) mobile
application.
Following the launch ofthe
Skype app for BlackBerry and Android-running handsets, the two have announced
the availability of the Skype app for multimedia 3G phones based on Qualcomm's
BREW (binary runtime environment for wireless) platform. These include the LG
enV Touch, the LG Chocolate Touch and the Samsung Reality.
"The Skype mobile app for Verizon Wireless 3G multimedia phones works
the same way it does on the carrier's smartphones, letting you make free calls
to friends and family on Skype, [make] great value calls to landlines and
mobile phones overseas, and send IMs to people on Skype anywhere in the world,"
Skype blogger Peter Parkes shared in an Aug. 18 post.
The app can be downloaded from the Verizon Media Store or from the Media
Center/Get It Now on some handsets, or by texting SKYPE to 2255 for a link to
the download. Once the app is on board, users can place free Skype-to-Skype
calls from their mobile device, computer or even television. (Skype adds an
asterisk here, explaining that while the calls are free and don't count toward
one's Verizon minutes allowance, users will need a data plan to use Skype
mobile on a Verizon Wireless phone.)
Skype calls to a mobile number or landline in the United
States do, however, count toward a user's
Verizon minutes. And Skype calls to international mobile or landline numbers do
come at a price-albeit a nicely discounted one-which users can pay for via a
Skype subscription or using Skype Credit. An example, per the Skype blog, is
the ability to make unlimited calls to landlines in Gaudalajara,
Mexico City and Monterrey
for $6.99 a month.
Also, there's no fear of a user missing an incoming call, as the Skype app
can continually run in the background.
The Verizon announcement comes more than year after the carrier, at its 2009
Developer Community Conference, emphasized that in looking forward-particularly
at Android-running handsets-it still hasn't forgotten about its older supported
platforms, and recommitted
to working with Qualcomm in support of BREW.
Skype has also been busy, and on Aug. 9 filed for an IPO, though offered no timeline for when
potential shareholders might be able to purchase stock. In its preliminary
prospectus, Skype estimated that the initial offering's value could be up to
$100 million, though it declined to reveal a specific price share to the
Associated Press.
For more information on the Skype app for BREW phones on Verizon, visit Skype.com.
Michelle Maisto has been covering the enterprise mobility space for a decade, beginning with Knowledge Management, Field Force Automation and eCRM, and most recently as the editor-in-chief of Mobile Enterprise magazine. She earned an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, and in her spare time obsesses about food. Her first book, The Gastronomy of Marriage, if forthcoming from Random House in September 2009.
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