Now there’s another way to make your iPhone (
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Skype has announced its Skype for iPhone and iPod Touch on the App Store in Canada.
“We are delighted to bring the Skype (
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Alert) for iPhone application to Canadian iPhone and iPod Touch users,” said Tom Yeung, Skype`s director of market development for the Americas.
Yeung said the Skype for iPhone application has “more than six million downloads from the App Store so far,” making it “one of our most popular mobile offerings.”
The app includes free Skype-to-Skype calls from any Wi-Fi zone to other Skype users worldwide, and lets users call landline or mobile phones at Skype’s rates from any Wi-Fi zone, as well as send and receive instant messages to and from individuals or groups via 3G, Wi-Fi or EDGE.
Skype officials said users can also receive calls to a personal online number on Skype and see when Skype contacts are online or available to IM or talk.
It offers call forwarding, voicemail retrieval and SMS messaging and is available in such languages as Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish and traditional Chinese.
The Skype for iPhone application requires a Wi-Fi connection to make free Skype-to-Skype calls or calls to mobiles and landlines. The app uses Wi-Fi, 3G or EDGE (based on the fastest connection available) to sign into Skype, update a contact list, maintain and update presence and send or receive instant messages.
In March
TMC’s Tom Keating (
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Alert) blogged that Skype for iPhone app “is unavailable to our Canadian friends across the border in the Apple iTunes App Store.”
Keating reportedly contacted Skype for comment and their representative told him there are some patent-licensing issues which prevent us from offering it there.
He then asked if other countries were affected or if it was just Canada, and “was informed it was just Canada. When asked whose patent it was or what category it involved (i.e. mobile VoIP), the representative said, ‘I can’t go into many more details other than it’s codec related.’”
David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.Edited by
Marisa Torrieri
