Skype for Apple iPhone OS4

David Ponsford demonstrated Skype as a background app at last week's Apple briefing on the iPhone OS 4, coming mid-2010. John Chang, Skype's lead iPhone developer, helped with the demo. David came to Skype from SpinVox Skype's voicemail-to-text partner.

Several features announced at the OS4 preview event affect Skype. Multitasking, location services, data encryption service, and a user alerting service. David answered a few questions by email.

Skype Journal: Now that two apps can be running at the same time, will OS4 let Skype expose its own APIs to third party Apple developers to build iPhone or iPad plug-ins? Are apps now allowed to talk with each other?

David Ponsford: Co-operation between 3rd party apps was not something that was discussed at the iPhone OS 4.0 preview by Apple.

Skype in the iPhone's background, shown on a second status bar, at the top.

SJ: What does Apple's encryption service add beyond what Skype for iPhone does now? Could there be efficiencies? Will OS4's encryption protocols be compatible with Skype's? Aside from encrypting Skype-to-Skype and Skype-to-Server communication, might they be used to increase the privacy of Skype data stored locally on an Apple mobile device?

DP: We are still evaluating Apple’s new enterprise features. All Skype-to-Skype communications are encrypted, as a matter of course. Our users’ privacy is of paramount importance to us.

SJ: Which of Skype's features will be turned off when running in the background? Will Skype's SILK codec be available during background calls?

DP: We are still evaluating all the new features available to us as part of the iPhone OS 4.0 developer preview that was released on Thursday. Early indications are that that Skype-to-Skype calls will still use the full capabilities of the SILK codec, even when they are in the background.

SJ: I haven't seen any Skype alerts on the iPhone so far. Does Skype use the existing alert service? For which notifications? Will you change the types of alerts Skype uses to communicate with a user? The frequency?

DP: Thursday’s technology demo of iPhone OS 4.0, in which Skype participated, used the new local notification system to show that an incoming Skype call was happening.

SJ: Apple is creating stronger technical and experience design differences between the 3GS and earlier iPhones, the iPod Touch family, and the iPad. Will Skype need to offer different software for the platforms or will you be able to offer one OS4 app that adjusts to each device?

DP: It is too early for Skype to give a definitive answer on this specific point; however, it will be our goal to make a single download available to all iPhone users that want Skype, making it super simple to get Skype for your iPhone, with all the features available for it.

SJ: Now that location services are available to Skype through APIs, what will you consider before making it easy or automatic for users to pipe their location into their Skype's presence?

DP: If Skype believes there is a significant benefit to our customers to offer location-based services, we will look at how these can be offered, while making sure that privacy and other customer experience issues are taken into account at the same time.

SJ: Skype on Verizon Android and Blackberry phones is promising betting integration with native address books. Do the OS4 APIs make it easier to offer similar sync, data population, and dialing features in Skype?

DP: Skype will be evaluating the new APIs available to all developers in order to understand what new features they offer us in order to create the best user experience possible for our users.

SJ: How did you wind up on stage in Cupertino?

DP: My dashing good looks, confusing accent and need to get Gold status on Virgin Atlantic...

SJ: What's Steve Jobs' Skype name?

DP: I don’t know this one. J

tags: skype, apple, iphone, mobile, ipod, os4

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
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Concept Art: The FuriousTeam Skype fish

Ever have problems with your Amoi (夏新) Skypephone? Furious Team makes a Furious Gold product that claims to repair, direct unlock, disable OTP check, reset phone code and factory settings to default, fix Bluetooth address and IMN, and read phone info. Haven't used it so I cannot say if it works or not. This eight year old GuangZhou company says the QCOM Smart Tool works on the AMOI SkypePhone WP-S1, AMOI SkypePhone WP-S2, and the AMOI SkypePhone 3 INQ. Here's a video of unlocking an AMOI S1.

So here's the Skype version of the FuriousTeam puffer fish, part of a whole school of FuriousTeam fish tailored for different jobs and communities.

tags: skype, skypephone, amoi, furiousteam, fish, guangzhou, china, cn, design, logo

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

The Skype Restructuring: Global Products, Regional Markets

Josh Silverman joined Skype as President early in the spring of 2008; since then he has been reviewing Skype's opportunities and building a team of experienced executives who can bring to Skype the products, programs and team building expertise required to operate a business with a run rate of $600MM per year, 20% contribution margins to eBay and growing at 380,000 new account registrations per day (with "real user" growth also increasing significantly).

Summarizing the past executive appointment announcements we can clearly start to see the evolution of a business structure, along with each unit's responsibilities:

• Operations: Product, Marketing, Customer Care, Support
• Technology: Engineering, Platform, Development Community
• Strategy: Partnerships, Strategic Alliances, Acquisitions
• Administration: Global Communications Human Resources. Finance, and Legal round out the top executive team.

During our interview at CES 2009 with Skype COO Scott Durschlag, he outlined details of his restructuring of Skype's Operations team along two axes: product and geography under the mantra of providing "Skype Everywhere".

Global product offerings will encompass three divisions: consumer, business and mobile, each responsible for developing products. Each of these groups will be interacting with members of CTO Daniel Berg's technology teams to convert their technology developments into marketable global product offerings and to adapt the technology to meet product marketing needs.

• Consumer will involve the current Skype client desktop offerings along with hardware, such as Skype phones.
• Business starts with the current Skype Business Control Panel but intends to expand well beyond this starting point into a range of offerings, such as Skype for Asterisk and the recently announced IBM LotusLive developments, addressing the small-to-medium business market.
• Mobile involves current products such as Skype for Windows Mobile, Skypephone (in conjunction with iSkoot), the recently launched Skype Lite (including Skype for Android) as well as any upcoming offerings for the iPhone and BlackBerry

In addition each of these divisions will be responsible for developing appropriate customer care and support programs appropriate to market demands. For instance, the business unit will come up with ongoing support programs relevant to supporting sustainable business operations of its products' users. Ideally these programs would follow the model of Red Hat for Linux or Digium for Asterisk and build up a network of resellers and VARS who would provide relevant and timely end user support. While Dan Berg's technology team will be responsible for third party developer partner support, an additional challenge for the Business products group will be to assist with marketing of business applications offered by these developer partners.

While Skype veteran Stefan Oberg is heading up the Business unit, announcements re appointments to head up Consumer and Mobile are pending.

Along the geography axis is a recognition that, while the Products divisions have a global mandate, there are different market needs within different regions of the world. For instance, in many Asian market wireless carriers do not subsidize mobile phones as is the North American practice. This requires a differentiated approach to these markets with respect to how easily innovations, especially around reduced calling costs, can be introduced to these markets.

The geographical market responsibilities are:

• Americas: Don Albert becomes General Manager, Americas. Don has had North America responsibility for a couple of years and will now be responsible for both North and South America. With respect to the latter he is looking forward to building on all the Skype activity in Brazil, for instance. (And, yes, once again at CES Don was made aware we are awaiting SkypeIn and a Skype Store for Canada)
• Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA): appointment pending
• Asia/Pacific: Yesterday we saw an announcement of the appointment of Dan Neary as General Manager, Skype Asia Pacific. One of Dan's initial responsibilities will be to build and monitor closer relationships with partners such as TOMSkype to avoid embarrassments such as that created by the TOM Skype privacy breach we have reported on last fall.

Outstanding executive appointments are expected shortly; at this point it's becoming all about execution. The next six months will tell the story.

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Truphone Breaks the Carrier Barrier

Truphone's announcements last week overcame a significant carrier resistance barrier to using VoIP-enabled services to reduce international calling costs. The key secret here was that it required the combination of Truphone's iPhone and iPod Touch applications along with the Apple Application program that leverages Apple's established carrier relationships to break this barrier.On Friday I was finally able to complete provisioning of Truphone on my iPhone. It happened at this time for three reasons:

• The association of my original Truphone number and account with a Nokia N95 handset and the "416" number I eventually transferred to my iPhone whose acquisition as an upgrade on my carrier account minimize my iPhone costs over the term of the three year contract.
• The original iPhone application only supported outbound calling; I would have lost the Truphone inbound calling feature I had on the N95.
• For this reason I left Truphone on my N95 (using a deactivated SIM and my home office WiFi access point) pending the arrival of a Truphone for iPhone application and service that supported both inbound and outbound calling.

Recall also that the original Truphone for iPhone only allowed calls over WiFi access points with no ability to pass them through the underlying 3G wireless carrier. Truphone's two announcements last week addressed three issues:

• Truphone for iPhone now supports both inbound and outbound calling
• Truphone added the Truphone Anywhere service such that Truphone for iPhone calls could be made over the underlying 3G carrier as well as over WiFi.
• Truphone for iPod Touch (2nd generation) invoked the Truphone Anywhere service allowing calls to be made from iPod Touch to any PSTN number.

Over the course of the past week it has become possible to make low cost international calls from any iPhone or iPod Touch mobile device worldwide. Truphone has demonstrated how the underlying service provider can can eliminate the need to have a multitude of individual "carrier-service provider agreements" with the 79 carriers currently offering the iPhone worldwide. Yet carriers still benefit through increased local minutes used to provide the connection to/from Truphone calls. To quote from Ted Wallingford's "Heartburn Chuckle: The telecom industry can blame itself":

The Carriers

The carriers are firms like AT&T, Windstream, Verizon, BT, and so on. Their obsession with the billing unit (the almighty minute) has made them helpless to see the possibilities of a software-rich, application-based global ecosystem. Consequently, the most successful apps to arrive on the carriers’ networks, the ones most embraced by the public, overwhelmingly have one purpose: to steal billable minutes from the carriers. The innovation disappeared and the scrappy new players in the market, the ones with the power to transform the public’s thinking about telecom, instead got stuck doing the same old thing the big telecoms do to put bread on the table: bill minutes. [Author's italics]

For instance, Canadians can now use Truphone for iPhone as their international calling service over Rogers without the need to subscribe to one of Rogers international calling plans but perhaps with an increase in their monthly "local" voice plan minutes. In this case, there is no cost for the actual application and you establish international call credits through a Truphone account. When Rogers' iPhone customers travel to Europe, calling back to North America can be handled at a much lower cost through hotel, cafe and airport WiFi services, such as Boingo or iPass. (True roaming calls from outside the "home country" over a 3G carrier will still be expensive; Andy's post linked here suggests RebelSIM provides a solution.)

It was the second part of this announcement that is most significant. Previously VoIP-enabled services, such as 3's Skypephone, required working with individual carriers to establish the appropriate business and operating agreements. However, in one move, Truphone was able to leverage Apple's relationships with 79 carriers worldwide to bring about commitment free international calling. Apple, through its Application Program has become a disintermediator, facilitating a business model disruption, once again.

As for the iPhone for iPod Touch application; this is why the most successful carriers need to offer both wireless and broadband Internet services. Calls via WiFi access points, including one's broadband Internet service, go over the broadband connection and reduce carriers' needs to build out the capital-intensive wireless network infrastructure, including backhaul.

In a future post, once I've had some more Truphone for iPhone experience, I'll do a comparison of services available over Skype and over Truphone. But one obvious difference: Truphone is about voice conversations only; Skype is about voice and text conversations.

Related Post: Race to Provide Low Cost International Calling Heats Up

Tags: Truphone, iPhone, carriers, voip, Skypephone, iSkoot, international calling, service providers, WiFi

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Race to Provide Low Cost International Calling on Mobile Heats Up

Yesterday I wrote a post for GigaOm, Skype: Coming to a Cell Phone Near You, discussing how the announcement of two new beta versions of Skype on mobile devices gave a hint of Skype's future mobile strategy.

At the same time Truphone announced a new version of their iPhone application. Whereas the version released at the time of the Apple App Store launch back in July only supported outbound calling over WiFi access points, the new release not only supports inbound calling to your iPhone number but also makes outbound calls via the 3G carrier networks that offer the iPhone.

Innovation driven competition in delivering low cost international calling services appears to be heating up during these challenging economic times - at least for calls originating in your "home" calling country or area code(s). Here's a brief summary of what is evolving:

We've seen the evolution of two architectures for making VoIP-enabled calling from mobile devices; it's all a matter of where the calling party's Skype (or VoIP client) session is opened up - directly on the device or on a dedicated hosted server. This leads to two other considerations:

• Carrying the voice portion of the call from the mobile device into the network cloud, either via the carrier's robust and proven (GSM) voice channel or over via a WiFi access point
• The need to support Skype's instant messaging (chat and presence); this always occurs as a data activity

VoIP Client on the Mobile Device; VoIP over WiFi
Skype for Windows Mobile places the VoIP client directly onto the device. As a result the device must handle the "VoIP processing" to generate the packets that are transmitted over the supporting data network (either a carrier's 3G network or via a WiFi access point.) As mentioned previously, it places heavy demands on the device's resources, especially the processor (running at much lower speeds than on a PC) and the battery.
Truphone's original voice offering also runs on the device (usually a Nokia Smartphone). While both Skype for Windows Mobile and Truphone can run over either WiFi access points or a 3G network, it is strongly advised to use these only over WiFi access points to have a reliable, robust, high quality voice service. For instance, the Skype for Windows Mobile download page says:

• Log into Skype from any WiFi zone to make free calls and send instant messages to anyone else on Skype, anywhere in the world, any day of the week.
• WiFi connection or 3G/2G data connection (we cannot guarantee voice quality over 3G/2G. You may also be liable to additional data charges so please check with your operator before using)

Truphone's original iPhone outbound calling offering was also only available using the iPhone's WiFi capability; however, details of their architecture were never revealed.

Accessing VoIP via a Wireless Carrier
Over the past year we have seen the rise of several services that use the alternate architecture where a call is placed via a local access point to a hosted server that then opens up a Skype client. The server-based Skype client then completes the call as a Skype-to-Skype call.

While originally pioneered by iSkoot, a service using this architecture, such as Skype Lite beta, makes a call to a SIP Gateway server via a local point of presence while data about the call is concurrently sent via the underlying data network to a hosted Mobile Gateway. This dedicated gateway then sets up a Skype-to-Skype call between the SIP Gateway — now connected to your cell phone — and the destination Skype contact. Skype chat messages can also be exchanged concurrently over the data network. We are now seeing various offerings using this architecture:

• The highly successful Skypephone offered by 3 in nine countries.
• iSkoot providing service for a wide range of phones including BlackBerry, Nokia and T-Mobile's G-1.
• Truphone Anywhere: when Truphone found they could not offer a highly reliable service over 3G networks (largely due to device resource considerations), they launched Truphone Anywhere that allows Truphone calls to be made over a 2G (GSM/EDGE) or 3G (UMTS/HSPA) voice/data network as well as over WiFi access points.
• Skype for Mobile beta - Skype's first attempt to go beyond Skype for Windows Mobile onto other platforms such as Nokia N-Series and E-Series devices. This never got out of the beta phase; while you could use Skype chat anywhere, the voice service was only to be available in a limited number of countries (that did not overlap with countries where Skypephone was available).
• Skype Lite beta: building on the Skype for Mobile beta experience to a service that supports not only smartphones but also over 90 cell phones that support a Java client and include basic web browsing and data capability. According to the Skype Lite page it appears that Skype is working with carriers in ten countries to support this service.
• Truphone for iPhone 1.12 release announced yesterday: makes Truphone calls either over WiFi or any cellular network using an iPhone, building on their Truphone Anywhere experience.

Key features of these server-hosted VoIP client services:

• They are most cost effective when calling from your home country or local calling area. You could incur long distance or, when outside your home country, roaming charges that would run up quite quickly.
• An unlimited or high cap data plan minimizes costs associated with using these services.
• Only Skype provides a full Instant Messaging capability covering both chat and presence. Some Truphone offerings have shown support for SMS messaging.
• Calls to Skype or Truphone contacts are no additional cost beyond the "local" connection cost.
• Calls to the PSTN, such as SkypeOut calls, require Skype or Truphone subscriptions or credits.
  
• Calls to mobile numbers outside U.S. and Canada will still invoke the charges incurred in "caller pays" mobile services.

Why only the cost of a "local" call? Your cell phone makes a call to a local number which puts the call through to the service's SIP Gateway. At this point you connect into a Skype-to-Skype call for which there are no termination charges involved as a result of Skype's unique (and secure) peer-to-peer architecture. The same applies to Truphone where Truphone-to-Truphone calls are free.

This Skype Lite beta announcement portends that we could be seeing mobile Skype-to-Skype calling, along the lines of 3's popular Skypephone service in nine countries, become available to mobile customers having a much broader range of cell phones and in up to ten additional countries.

One other service that can be accessed from any phone is Mobivox. However, there you have to build up and manage your address book online such that VoxGirl can help you make your calls; it does not access your mobile phone address book. It's purely a voice service with no messaging component (other than using SMS to facilitate setting up calls under certain circumstances).

While we're getting a first step in driving down mobile costs for international calling, the next step needs to be finding a user-friendly way to drive out roaming costs. MaxRoam and Truphone's SIM4Travel are starting to offer some hope on this front; however, at the moment their costs for USA-Canada calls are much more than my Rogers roaming charge. The winners will feature not only lower costs but a very friendly user interface, interacting with the device address book, that also provides the most complete ranges of services in terms of coverage and complementary conversation modes, such as IM.

iSkoot Scores a New $19MM Financing Round

This evening iSkoot, the service that provides Skype access from smartphones, announced they had received a new $19 million venture financing round to build out and bring to market a new suite of mobile communications services. Recently iSkoot acquired Social IM, who is in the beta stage of producing a desktop Instant Messaging client linking real time communications and notifications to social networks. No further details have been released but obviously both their existing financing partners and one new partner feel there is a significant potential.

Update: VentureBeat reports that the financing relates to a forthcoming AT&T service offering "an array of Web services to users of its low-end phones — the majority of its phones, which don’t have the iPhone’s powerful features. The services will include things like social networking, email, RSS feeds and eventually services like Twitter."

In addition to their smartphone service, iSkoot also provides the firmware behind the Skypephone, available through the Hutcheson Whampoa 3 carrier in the U.K., six other European countries, Hong Kong and Australia. According to Tech Crunch over 300,000 Skypephones are now in service. However, their recently launched iSkoot for Android appears to have encountered a rougher road; Andy speculates they may have launched prematurely to meet the G-1 launch date. I'm sure we'll see upgrades to address the outstanding issues.

Personally I have iSkoot running on my BlackBerry Bold, largely to keep current on my Skype chat sessions when away from my office, and have experienced it on the 8820 as well as a Nokia N95. Look forward to learning more about the services whose launch is being supported by this new funding round in today's somewhat rough economy. At least there's still support for innovation in the real time conversation space.

• iSkoot Presentation at eComm 2008
• iSkoot Gets Third Party Recognition
• iSkoot Extends Partnership with Skype

Tags: iSkoot, Skypephone, BlackBerry Bold, Android

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SkypeOut Feature Added to 3's Skype-Enabled Phones

Mobile carrier pioneer 3 has taken another step that reduces costs for mobile calling worldwide from any of the Skype-enabled mobile phone handsets in their offering. Effectively it means that 3's customers can not only make free calls to other Skype contacts but also to any landline and mobile worldwide via an implementation of a SkypeOut type of service at SkypeOut rates. Skype-to-Skype calls remain totally free as well as Skype Instant Messaging activity.
As a result 3's pricing plans and policy covers monthly subscribers and pay-as-you-go customers. For the latter a top-up will now provide ninety days of free Skype access. Most importantly there are no extra charges from 3 for using SkypeOut. And the fair use policy still applies. These plans apply to the two Skypephones as well as several models of both Nokia E-series/N-series phones and Sony Ecrisson phones.
What is 3's motivation to do this?

• They have no connection charges for Skype-to-Skype calls
• 3 will receive revenues through Skype's affiliate marketing program or a similar arrangement for SkypeOut calls.
• It is a key marketing tool for low cost recruiting of customers, building on their previous "Free Skype call" marketing activities.

With the forthcoming launch of Blackberry Bold at 3, similar customer benefits can be obtained using iSkoot, although without carrier support, there may be additional charges to access an iSkoot point-of-presence.
3 continues to pioneer development of business models for the incorporation of Skype into the mobile conversations world. 3's services are available in U.K., Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Italy, Hong Kong and Australia.

Tags: Skype, SkypeOut, 3, Hutcheson-Whampoa, Blackberry Bold, iSkoot

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Andy's Travel Tips ...

Andy Abramson at VoIP Watch travels a lot to keep up with his ever expanding list of clients. And he has been having his home office renovated for the past few months. So he gets more experience than most of us dealing with all the trivia of travel, including keeping his communications costs down. Check out his post "Mastering Better Working Anywhere" for the details including:

7. For places you visit regularly, buy a pre-paid SIM card, avoid roaming rates. If you visit multiple countries get a travel sim from SIM4TRAVEL or MaxRoam. If you are in WiFi environments a lot, get an account with client Truphone. Bottom line is you will save money and be more connected.

He failed to mention his overall mobile strategy but Saturday he called me from a new Skypephone 2; I initially took the call on my Blackberry Bold (to which my Skype account is forwarded). Perfect call quality for a 5 minute conversation; when I arrived home we continued the call over my PC Skype connection with excellent voice quality. Andy thinks 3 sets the standard for carrier services; the final confirmation? He actually bought two Skypephone 2's (the second one for his wife) on prepaid plans for a total of £99. His conclusion:

Bottom line, if you're heading to the UK or any country 3 serves, you can expect this kind of a great experience. That makes 3 a Working Anywhere Approved carrier.

Tags: 3, Skypephone, SIM4TRAVEL, MaxRoam, VoIP Watch, Andy Abramson

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Skypephone 2 Out in the UK

Andy at VoIP Watch, who makes good use of the Skypephone when in the U.K., reports on the launch of the Skypephone 2 in the U.K. with some very interesting usage plans.

And it was launched on the announced date.

I'm off to the North American Blackberry Bold launch at Rogers tomorrow morning. Seems like RIM has sorted out the 3G network issues that delayed its launch.