Skype for Symbian lands on Ovi Store = more than 200 million possible users
Pretty huge news in our book: Skype has published a free mobile application for Symbian in the Ovi Store, basically enabling over 200 million Nokia handset users to easily download the program and start making free Skype-to-Skype calls from their phones.
If I were a carrier, I’d probably be feeling rather nervous right now – and / or infuriated.
Skype for Symbian, which you can also download the app straight from the Skype website, will run on any Nokia smartphone using Symbian^1, the latest version of the Symbian platform (see list below).
It’s not the Skype wasn’t already available for Symbian, but its appearance in the Ovi Store will certainly increase awareness of its existence – as well as that of the Ovi Store, for that matter.
We recently reported that Nokia’s Ovi Store now serves more than 1 million downloads per day as of January 2010 (yesterday they said that number increased to 1.5 million per day or 22 downloads per second), and if the success of the Skype app for the iPhone is any indication, the addition of Skype will lift those numbers up significantly.
The app does everything you’d want a Skype app to do, as it includes support for making free calls to other Skype users over Wi-Fi and 3G, instant messaging, picture and video sharing – the whole nine yards.
This is the long list of phones that can now accommodate the installation of the Skype Mobile app: Nokia N97, Nokia N97 mini, Nokia X6, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and Nokia 5530 and the following non-touch devices: Nokia E72, Nokia E71, Nokia E90, Nokia E63, Nokia E66, Nokia E51, Nokia N96, Nokia N95, Nokia N95 8Gb, Nokia N85, Nokia N82, Nokia N81, Nokia N81 8 Gb, Nokia N79, Nokia N78, Nokia 6220 classic, Nokia 6210 Navigator and Nokia 5320.
Skype says it will even be updating the app soon to make it function on Symbian mobiles from other handset makers, including Sony Ericsson.
Bad news for carriers, good news for most everyone else.
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Filed Under: Mobile Tech
Yes, The latest version of ovi maps include free turn-by-turn navigation for the most of the nokia phones after 2008. And it’s all for FREE. Something tells me, this one is a winner release from Nokia. Although, I believe they won’t give this to other competitors, ‘that easily’ Updates: http://bit.ly/ovi-maps-real-performance
Thats a cool nigga! Great accent
did skype forget about the 3G update? hello skype?
And how could TC not mention that T-Mobile USA just announced Nokia 5230 Nuron with free navigation and you can download skype for free at Ovi store!!! Finally Americans started to enter in the real smartphone world.
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Carriers are waking up the the fact that voice is dead as a revenue source. Their future is data, and voice is just another app, like email, running over data. You’ll see your tiered voice plans replaced by tiered data plans as this develops.
[...] read over at Mobile Crunch this morning that Skype launched for Symbian. This time it’s really running over IP rather [...]
I think it’s because of their enormous market share and the price sensitivities in developing markets which Nokia target.
I thought Skype made Skype on Android absolutely useless because of carrier pressure. Why make a real Skype now on Symbian?
Skype text pricing in US? $.11- ridiculous. Present pricing outside of unlimited with carrier on a purchase basis is around $.02
Traveling abroad then there is a reason.
That’s one way of looking at it. The other way is that most subscriptions come with X hundred free texts and they could see their available text capacity increase as a result without loss of revenue.
Carriers can also start see SMS revenues decline!
Is it really bad news for carriers? 2 Sides to the coin, many people will use it on 3G networks, creating more bandwidth use for the carriers and potentially selling more data plans. However, Skype is likely to be less efficient in transferring data across mobile networks, therefore bandwidth efficiency (cost per MB) maybe higher in terms of the number of users each cell tower can support.
In terms of skype ‘out’, skype have to pay carriers/telecom companies fees for using their networks which would be more than if someone used a ‘VOIP calling card’. Most carriers have the right to cancel contracts for excessive use of data (look in your terms and conditions) at their own perusal.
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Hi
How about skype for BlackBerry??