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Skype is planning to introduce a mobile video chat service this year, believing it will not be affected by problems that have prevented mobile video calls from taking off in the past.
"Before Skype, VoIP had a pretty mixed reputation," Nicholas Babaian, Skype’s head of product management, mobile, said. "We see the same opportunity in video-calling."
He explained that the key problems for 3G video calling were high and confusing costs, a poor user experience, and the fact that people rarely even knew if the person they were calling could handle video calls on their phone.
"We think we have a way for all those problems to disappear. We’re going to make it completely free, easy to use, and you’ll always be able to see who in your contact list can receive video. We think we can reset the bar on mobile video calling, and it’s something we’re going to do this year," he said.
Babaian also revealed that Skype’s non-video iPhone app already has 12 million unique users.
"We’ve already had over a billion Skype-to-Skype minutes on 3 UK, and we’re now getting 100 million Skype-to-Skype minutes a month," he added.
Click here to read Babaian’s full interview with PCR’s sister publication, Mobile Entertainment.
