Dr Floyd: Don’t suppose you have any idea what the damn thing is, huh?
Dr. Rolf Halvorsen: Wish to hell we did.
– 2001: A Space Odyssey
Skype is seeking the mobile market as their next frontier, says C/Net, but mobile operators who feel threatened by Skype could put the kibosh on large-scale adoption of the Voice over IP software for some time to come.
Skype lets people to make free phone calls to other Skype users over the Internet. Skypeout allows calls from Skype to landlines or mobile phones worldwide as low as 2.1¢ per minute. Another paid service, Skypeln, provides a personal and portable number that people can use to accept calls. It costs $18 for 3 months or $60 for a full year.
Now the company is focusing its efforts on the mobile market. At CES, Wistron NeWeb is showing a hybrid GSM/VoWiFi phone that could be ported to Google’s Android platform by March.
Skype will be embedded on cell phones using the UK’s “3″ cellular network. The phone, being demonstrated at CES, is already available over 3’s network in seven countries, including the U.K., Australia, Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, and soon Hong Kong.
Skype is also working with Sony, putting its software on the PSP 2000 portable gaming device and embedding it in the new version of Sony’s Mylo personal communicator, the Mylo COM-2.
Skype software had already been available on the original Mylo that was launched in 2006.
At the Consumer Electronics Show, Skype said it plans to work with Intel to put Skype software on Intel-powered Mobile Internet devices (MIDs). Intel’s 45 nm Silverthorne and Diamondville processors, unlike XScale, utilize x86 code base.
Paul Kapustka used Skype over WiMAX inside Intel’s SUV at CES (above).
Intel’s Julie Coppernoll takes us on a Mobile WiMax tour of Las Vegas (above) and demos a Skype call using Motorola basestations with Clearwire spectrum - a clone of the Hillsboro trial setup in Oregon.
Intel and Motorola built a small Mobile WiMAX network covering 20 square miles for the demo. Dan Coombes, Motorola’s CTO of wireless broadband, said the WiMAX basestation was receiving data at 20 Mbit/s from the mobile client. Motorola has several Mobile WiMAX CPEs for Sprint and Clearwire.
Skype was bought by eBay for $2.6 billion in 2005, and now has some 250 million users worldwide.
The impact Skype will have on the mobile market is still unknown.
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