Skype comes to the iPhone

It’s official: Skype has been released as an app for the iPhone and iPod touch. And since Skype allows you to make phone calls for free, no one will ever have to worry about going over their minutes or paying a cell phone bill again. It’s the end of AT&T as we know it! Anarchy will reign supreme! World governments will fall! New planets will be discovered! Well, not exactly. In reality, while Skype for iPhone is in fact a big deal, its real impact may have relatively little to do with cellphone carriers or minutes at all.



But we’ll get to that in a moment. First, for those who aren’t familiar with what Skype is, it’s a piece of software that allows you to use your Mac or PC as if it were a telephone by making calls over your existing internet connection to other people who have Skype on their computers. The “phone call” consists of talking into your computer’s built-in microphone and hearing the other person’s voice coming out of your computer’s speakers – or using a headset to make things sound better.



Skype’s potential has always been impressive. Since you’re already paying for unlimited high-speed home internet (dial-up laggards need not apply), making Skype calls via your computer doesn’t cost you anything. Nor does the Skype software itself, which is free. But the limitations are two-fold: first, using your computer to make a phone call is a bit geeky, even though not difficult. And if you want to call someone, they have to have the Skype software launched and running on their computer at the time you want to call them (and be in a position to sit down at their computer and take the call). If you want to use your Skype software to dial an actual telephone number, you’ll have to a couple cents a minute to Skype for the privilege.



But here comes Skype for the iPhone, a mobile device, meaning that you no longer have to sit in front of your computer to make (or receive) or Skype call. You can walk around, use your comfy iPhone earbuds if you want, and use Skype on a device that was actually designed to be a telephone. But here’s the bomb drop that’ll make some of you wonder what all the hype is about: Skype can only be used on your iPhone (or iPod touch) if you’re within range of wifi. In other words, those 3G and EDGE networks that allow you to make a phone call or check your email on your iPhone anytime you want, from anywhere you want? You can’t use the Skype app over those. In fact, for most iPhone users, the wifi limitation means that you’ll only be able to make phone calls on your iPhone over Skype if you’re at home, or maybe at work, or at a wifi-enabled coffee shop or hotel.

In other words, AT&T really doesn’t have much to worry about. Or do they? While iPhone Skype users are going to continue to use up as many minutes per month on their AT&T plan while out and about each day, the real key here may be that while you’re at home in the comfort of your own wifi network, you can make as many lengthy free phone calls as you want. For iPhone users who don’t have a traditional landline phone and are always worried about how those hour-long iPhone calls make from at home to their loved ones are going to impact their minute usage, here’s the opportunity to bypass that completely. And for those iPhone users who’ve only been keeping a landline phone installed at home specifically for those multi-hour phone calls, here might be their chance to finally cancel their landline once and for all.



But perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the Skype app is that allows you to make phone calls from your iPod touch when you’re within range of wifi. The majority of apps in the iTunes App Store (games, entertainment, etc) are of equal value to iPhone and iPod touch users, while a chunk of others (social networking apps and other apps that require some kind of network access in order to be used) are potentially of less value to iPod touch users since they’re limited as to where and when they can use such apps. But Skype might be the rare app that’s more valuable to iPod touch users than to iPhone users, as it adds a whole new kind of functionality (phone calls) to the iPod touch that wasn’t there before.

Sure, there are already a handful of third-party apps in the App Store that tie into Skype. But just as usage of Twitter apps would increase ten-fold if Twitter would just go ahead and make an app for iPhone instead of leaving it entirely in the hands of third-party developers who may or may not share Twitter’s vision and may or may not be able to get the word out to the user base that their product even exists, the recent addition of an official Skype app to the App Store is what will truly set Skype usage on the iPhone and iPod touch platform in motion on a wide scale.

It’s worth noting that Skype’s text chat feature (similar to using AOL Instant Messenger or iChat) is included in the Skype app and unlike phone calls, the text chatting can in fact be done over the cellular network, which means it’s available to you any time.

Well, that is any time the other person happens to have Skype up and running. In fact, the rather low odds of any two users happening to have the Skype app running on their iPhone or touch at the same time is pretty small unless the two users have scheduled something in advance (if you have illusions that you’re going to be able to Skype-call someone on their iPhone and it’s going to magically start ringing even if they don’t have the Skype app running at the time, forget about it – that’s not the way it works). So the real potential here is probably more about iPhone and iPod touch users being able to call other Skype users on their computers for free (it’s a lot easier to leave Skype running on your computer 24/7 than on your iPhone), along with the ability to make international calls from your iPhone or touch and only pay a couple cents per minute to Skype instead of paying insane insane international call rates to AT&T.



As far as the Skype app itself, it looks fantastic (in fact more attractive than the computer version of the Skype software), and fits right in with the motif used by many of the better-looking iPhone apps. In other words, this wasn’t some half-baked port from another platform; this app is for real.



While it’s yet to be seen what kind of an impact the Skype app will have on the overall platform, and users will find varying value in it depending on their own needs and usage patterns, the bottom line is that Skype has finally (officially) arrived on the iPhone and iPod touch platform.


And while the wifi-only nature of making calls via the Skype app means that true corporate-collapse worldwide anarchy will have to wait for another day, at least the Skype app itself is free for the taking.