A Real Skype Client for the iPhone

We have seen at least one company that lets you place Skype calls from your iPhone. But so far, this has been been through a call-back. This is not end-to-end VoIP. You are still using your airtime. Because of this, I am sure AT&T doesn't mind too much.

What I hope to see in the near future is a true Skype client running on the iPhone. I don't expect it to work well over GPRS, but you will be able to use it over Wi-Fi.

Because the iPhone is a closed platform, creating a Skype client for the iPhone will require a number of hacks. This means that most likely we won't get an "official Skype client" for the iPhone. And because the Skype system itself is closed, we haven't seen a lot of third-party Skype client for any platform. Creating one for the iPhone will be a double-challenge!

But ultimately, this will be done. And at that time it will be interesting to see how Apple and AT&T react.

eBay Loosing $1 Billion Because of Skype Outage?

TechCrunch is reporting that eBay market cap lost $1 billion dollar on August 16 because of Skype outage. The outage started the 16th and lasted for approximately 2 days. The chart shown by TechCrunch looks convincing enough, but let's zoom out for a second (see the chart on the right; click for a larger view). First, eBay stock started going down a few days before the 16th. Second, it went up on the 17th, while the outage was on its second day. So just looking at those charts, it doesn't seen that eBay's stock has been impacted in any significant way because of this issue.

Skype for the iPhone

SHAPE Services, a German company that creates IM clients for cell phones, has released a nice web site that enables you to use Skype from your iPhone. And if you don't own an iPhone yet, you can try it from Safari: skypeforiphone.com.

Skype for iPhone lets you chat with other Skype users, but also call people on Skype or on landlines. They achieve this by calling your phone and the other party through Skype, using your Skype credits.

Assuming you don't have a unlimited plan and are in the US, you will pay 2.1 USD cents/minutes to call another Skype user, and 4.2 USD cents/minute to call a land line in the US, China, and most European countries. Since you are paying airtime anyway, for US calls you'd better call the person directly with your phone. For international calls, unless you have a Skype unlimited plan, Jajah will give you better rates (with many countries in the 3-3.5 USD cents/minute). Watch the competition, do the math, and pick what's best for you!

Seen this first on Download Squad.