No Skype on Mobiles Anytime Soon

Posted in: VoIP

If you have been holding your breath for native Skype client to show up on your mobile phone, you could kick your mortal coil before that happens. At CES, Skype was busy announcing Wi-Fi based Skype devices, and actively denying any possibility of a a mobile client. They think that since the wireless broadband connections are too expensive, the consumers will be stuck with a huge mobile bill.

While that might be true, Skype is trying to spin its inability to make a mobile client. iSkoot has developed a client that allows you to make a Skype call from your mobile — their architecture basically runs Skype on a virtual machine on a server. There are several such workarounds. Skype could do exactly the same, but as we have reported in the past, that would go against the company ethos of running client on the edge, and not reliant on servers.

To be fair, most mobile phones are underpowered and cannot handle the Skype client’s processing needs. The data requirements are pretty high. There is a Windows Mobile version of Skype available, because Windows Mobile phones are typically powered by pretty beefy mobile processors. But those devices have their own set of phones.

The interest in VoIP calls from mobiles is increasing, and the start-ups are attracting money. Investors have explained to us that Skype’s inability to meet this market demand is one of the reasons they are bullish about the business. While that might be true, I think this is a CSVP model packaged in a mobile-VoIP wrapper.