Nokia and Skype have maintained a growing and harmonious relationship in the past years, and N900 is the only mobile phone in the Universe that runs a proper Skype. After conquering the desktop, Skype are expanding to more types of devices: mobile, TVs, etc.

The only serious platform Skype has been missing from is Android, possibly because of Google's failure to acquire it when Skype was bought by eBay. It has now been announced though that Skype are developing an Android application: http://skattertech.com/2010/05/skype...int-htc-evo-4g

Like it or not, Android is the mobile platform to beat. I believe video telephony will play an important role in the battle. Video Skype on N900 is one of the most important "killer apps". The only way for Nokia to keep their edge in this regard is, IMHO, to buy Skype.

It is not a secret that numerous pseudonymous experts here on TMO have much better strategies for Nokia than Nokia's own executives

So what do you think?

PS. Nevermind the typo in the poll question. Should read as the thread title, obviously.

I'd rather they acquired Gizmo 5.

I think not. eBay bought them, almost immediately regretted that purchase. I do admit that Nokia and Skype would be a good mix, better than eBay and Skype.

But i don't think they (Nokia) shouldn't buy Skype.

Google beat them to that punch.

Which reminds me... nothing new has come from that purchase yet.

What, from Google?

No.

Skype uses proprietary protocols and is bad for the same reasons Flash and H.264 is bad.

There is free and open solutions and protocols for chat/VoIP/video-call which hopefully will win over Skype one day.
http://ekiga.org/

I don't think video calling will be very big. Every Symbian handset supports 3G video calls out of the box (has for years) and no-one I know uses it. It's not free like skype, but if there was enough demand for it, people would pay for it.

Now I guess it depends on the price. How much would you pay to have exclusivity for (only) Skype video calls? Don't think it makes sense for Nokia, better to just partner with Skype.

Skype is more about the user base than about the technology now. I am sure many comparable or even superior solutions to VoIP exist, but how many are used by over 20 million people as I am writing this?

we need to just make software patents expire and go into the public domain after like 3 years.

it would be a good way to compete service-wise vs google which has google voice and gizmo.