Skype is planning to launch a version of its mobile VoIP software as an application on Apple’s iPhone, according to a source at GigaOM. The source says that the VoIP pioneer, which is owned by eBay, could make an announcement as early as next week at the CTIA Wireless trade show in Las Vegas.
Skype already offers a version of its P2P and IM software for Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform and has also recently announced a version called ‘Skype Lite‘ for Google’s Android platform. However, iPhone users can currently only access Skype via third-party applications.
Meanwhile, software vendor Bsquare has ported Adobe’s Flash technology onto the Android platform on behalf of an unnamed “global Tier 1″ mobile operator.
That would give Google’s platform an advantage over Apple, which has yet to include support for Flash on the iPhone, despite rumors that Apple and Adobe have been working on implementing the technology. Bsquare is not saying who the global operator is nor when the new Flash-enabled Android phone would launch. Maybe next week.
Google Android leader Andy Rubin demonstrated Flash on the T-Mobile G1 Android phone at an Adobe conference in November. I’d love to see SoundSlides on my Android.
Apple says their Worldwide Developers Conference will be held June 8-12, in San Francisco. Apple says this year’s WWDC will be all about the Mac OS X and the iPhone.
Infonetics forecasts an 8% drop in the total number of mobile phones sold in 2009, to 1.1 billion worldwide (down from 1.2 billion in 2008), but smartphones are expected to out-perform the downturn and show modest growth in 2009, and will post double-digit annual revenue growth from 2011 through 2013.
