I've checked Skype on my N9 recently and it seems it is now dead. It is working somehow but it is not as usable as it should be. Here it is how it works and how it's not:
- login to an account works perfectly, online status is keeped afterwards
- chatting or calling to older Skype clients (for instance 4.x on Linux) works OK
- chatting or calling to newer Skype clients (i.e. Android, iOS clients) doesn't work, persons whom you try to call/chat to seems to be offline and nothing reaches them
- battery drain is significant
All in all I've finally switched this account off as I don't have any old apps users in my Skype's book. The only way for sensible chat now is via Google's Hangouts using Jabber. It is not perfect (can't see chat history, no voice calls) but it is OK for simple text communication. This is sad as Skype implementation and level on integration with system on Maemo/Meego was really the greatest, no other mobile OSes have reached that, even native Windows Mobile version won't leave your audio calls in phone's calls log... RIP Skype.

I used a lot Skype, but never a big fan.
I see similar issues to what sylwiusz told on my N900 and on my linux 32 bit Skype. Skype do not support any more 32 bit linux too.

Voip is still working great. For chatting there is also Pidgin available.

I would like to see "signal" on maemo and I will forgot totally Skype..

Telegram looks like a great solution too. It is even available in early alpha stage on openrepos.

I've used Linphone with great success. Works well with Linux, Android, Windows and with Alien Dalvik. Skype belongs to history for me.

Can Linphone make video calls to Skype clients? If not, then it is about as useful to me as a warm blanket to a corpse.

Probably it is my blame: I start suggesting a hoped alternative.

But it is natural, it seems that Microsoft (Skype) is not interested in many Linux platform.

If Skype do not want us at all, maybe it is time to force the change: I have a lot of corresponding people using Skype, but from now if they want communicate with me they must change to other systems.

It is my personal opinion that Skype do not deserve my effort trying to keep it alive on a dedicated machine (real nor virtual).

Hope nobody think to a flame message. Friends, it is just resignation.

True, too nice to be real. Many reviewers at the time might even not have noticed as their mobile usage profile was not advanced enough yet.

Maemo had the best user interface for people who want to get stuff done. It was only step 4 of 5 as per announcement of the then still arrogant Nokia.

Nokia and Skype had announced during the 2009 Mobile congress in Barcelona a cooperation to integrate Skype in future Nokia's.

Skype could have become the future of telephony through integration with Nokia's Maemo 6 and Televisions.

But Microsoft got notice of that and commercial intrests of an oversees company won over practical usability.

For the record :
- the thing that is phased out is the client that uses the older original Fasttracker/Kazaa inspired proprietary protocole. (Same as the OLD linux qt-based client) (this is what the library provided by Skype for most smartphone used - like Maemo, WebOS, etc..
That the thing that is currently being dropped from Maemo.

- the new "official API" is the webapp https://web.skype.com (Same as the upcoming beta Linux client which is basically a webkit wrapper around the webapp).

You should be able to use the webapp with any modern browser.
Microsoft has even ported the call code from ORTP (Internet Explorer-specific) to WebRTC (IETF standard).

There's even a libpurple plugin written by EionRobb that currently supports the web api for chat (e.g: you could use it in pidgin or in telepathy), and now that microsoft has switched to WebRTC, even the calling function should be implementable eventually.

Once the calls get supported in plugins it should be doable again to have skype as simply an alternative provider in the phone app on smartphones.

(e.g.: using the purple plugin in telepathy makes it possible on Sailfish OS to chat through skype using the messaging app)