No it can't. Amazon warns "Voice over IP functionality, advertising, offensive materials, collection of customer information without express customer knowledge and consent, or usage of the Amazon or Kindle brand in any way are not allowed."
I can think of three reasons for this ban:
Amazon is worried about using up a year's worth of data plan with one long phone call.
Amazon contracted to ban VoIP at the request of its mobile carriers.
Amazon wants to reserve VoIP for a future Kindle product. The Amazon phone?
Kindles have a mobile phone built in and a lifetime data plan, apparently a dream VoIP device (although better speakers, a microphone, and a webcam would be nice). Amazon will require apps to pay for data transfers at $0.15 per megabyte. So I'm betting Amazon is most concerned with keeping the costs of their mobile plan affordable for users.
Killing Skype's developer program was an exercise in business discipline. You prune your tree of small, weak, sickly branches so nutrients and sunlight let the whole tree flourish.
Skype's developer program (SDP) has been bloodless for years. By every measure. Growth in programmers. Number of ecosystem products. Value contributed.
What devalued Skype's developer program?
5. Musical chair management.
I've lost count of the number of managers who've taken a stab at leading Skype developer relations in the last six years. It takes time and focus to be good at devrels, to build your devrels organization, to establish rapport and relationships with prospective partners.
4. Underfunding.
Skype's management shortchanged the developer program for Skype's first four years. DevRels never got the budget or headcount it needed to educate, evangelize and support developers. Software and hardware certifications, intended to promote the Skype brand and build trust, instead became a barrier to entry and a costly delay.
Two steps forward, one step crushing partners. Skype me for the sad details of developers who bet on Skype's constancy and lost. Lost money. Lost jobs. Lost careers. A trail of tears and dashed hopes.
2. Who You Know.
Want to get something done with Skype? You needed an inside friend. Skype's much better now that a process culture's emerging, but it's still true.
1. Six Year Old Technology.
The perfect developer relations program cannot put lipstick on a pig.
1a. Client-only Calling APIs: So no putting Skype inside your app.
Skype's web services are all proprietary, off-limits to the ecosystem. Skype runs "naked Skype" server farms to support its Skype Lite mobile application. Skype Lite does most things a desktop client does, through Internet APIs, and without resource hungry user interfaces. It's an internal Skype as a Platform service.
Skype's third-party developers want Skype as a Platform. A SaaP would bring Skype features and the Skype network to web and mobile applications. Web applications are nearly always better business than rich clients. They cost less, don't have installation problems, are less prone to user failure, are always fresh, and take less time for customers to get their first Aha! experience.
1b. Closed Skype client: So no putting your app inside Skype.
Skype keeps users from seeing third party developers. With the Adobe Photoshop Plugin and Firefox Extension architectures, for example, you can write apps that live inside Photoshop or Firefox. They improve a user's productivity and alter the user experience. They bring specialist expertise to the exact point where users need them.
While Skype's Public API (downloadable SDK) lets your desktop program talk to Skype's desktop software, it doesn't let you change what users see and do. The Skype UI is off-limits, verboten, pristine.
So you cannot offer inline language translation, extended emoji sets, inline Yahoo! Calendar reminders, or enrich contact profiles with updates about your friends' activities. If you cannot put your enhancements where a user needs them, why build them?
In short, the business and technology sides of the SDP were impaired to the point of irrelevance.
Skype needs to reset the program. And its platform.
While Skype will maintain the API, the developer relations program around it is over. The commerce component: Dead. "Skype Certified" software: Dead. Support: Dead.
Skype will continue to engineer the communications API.
They won't help you promote your software. They won't help you test and improve your software. They won't help you co-brand your software. They won't help you distribute your software. They won't help you sell your software. They won't help you process payments. They won't help you keep up to date on API changes.
Not that they'd executed terribly well on these in the past.
But that's what they're defunding.
Presumably all that energy and money will go into a new program for developers. Skype moved some of its devrels people to new teams, some to a team working on the public version of Skype's future cloud communications platform.
Was there a good reason to kill off the old program before the new one was up? Skype won't say. Will the old community fare poorly on the new platform? Does the current community of developers not build a million dollars in yearly value to the Skype brand? Do these developers have anywhere else to turn?
Subject: The future of Skype Extras Program From: [Someone at Skype]
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:52:23 +0100
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am contacting you on behalf of the Skype Extras Program.
Unfortunately I have to announce that the Skype Extras program will be shut down, effective September 11rd 2009. Despite the incredible breadth of Extras developed for Skype, simply not enough people were using them to justify our continued support of the Extras program. It was a tough decision for us, but we want to ensure that we prioritize our time and resources to deliver our core products such as voice and video, expanding Skype among business users, and expanding Skype into mobile and other platforms. The following changes will be effective from September 11th onwards:
We have decided that we will no longer certify new Extras. However, all existing Extras will stay certified until their expiration dates and all unused test tickets will be reimbursed.
We will continue to distribute applications through the existing Extras Manager in Skype for Windows but will no longer add new Extras to the Extras Manager.
All public API documents will continue to be maintained Skype will also support accessories via the Public API.
This decision also influences the payment terms that are currently in place. After December 11, Skype will no longer allow the use of Skype credit by 3rd Party Extras developers. A final invoice detailing the full amount of the gross revenue received from Skype users must be submitted within 45 days of this date. After the 25th of January, Skype will no longer be able to process publisher invoices.
We understand the impact that this decision will have on our community. If you have any additional questions regarding the payment terms or any of the other listed changes please don't hesitate to contact me.
eBay's post-Whitman management gets credit for doing something right. Staffing the right executives in 2008. Letting the new leaders turn the startup into a company worth selling. Sending the right signals to potential buyers. Getting the deal done. Not rewarding the founders for their Joltid extortion. Nice way to turn things around!
Skype will fund its own expansion. Don't expect cash infusions for acquisitions, infrastructure, labor intensive services, or advertising. Skype has been producing more than $10 million monthly in free cash. Skype's roadmap will chew up all of it just for internal growth and to create cash reserves.
Skype will keep its overall direction and product strategy. Skype doesn't need to rethink its business anytime soon.
The SEC pipeline of data will be gone. eBay's 2009q3 10Q report (coming this October) may be the last detailed reporting of Skype operations and finances ever. Privately owned companies need not report performance unless they float stock.
Five product changes I expect from Skype in the next year.
Better P2P. Skype will first deploy a simple functional replacement of the Joltid P2P engine. They will improve it, building in six years' of real world experience Joltid never had. Skype should be able to make its P2P network more resistant to Internet outages and blocking, more resilient in the face of damage to the peer fabric, more efficient in finding and routing connections between users.
Better video. Perhaps their own video codecs. Higher resolution video as cameras and PCs catch up. Multiparty video calls. Better use of processors, including video digital signal processors.
Skype Inside. A clearer platforming strategy, building on their experience with Skype Lite (clouds of Skype supporting thin, mobile Skype clients) and Skype For Asterisk (adding UI-free Skype clients to someone else's servers). Think "Communications as a Platform," where you can build Skype messaging, presence, and calling into mobile, desktop, and server applications.
ID anguish. Skype has an immature user identity model, left over from instant messaging services in the mid 1990s. We'll see greater conflict between Skype's two identity systems. Skype's consumer and corporate Skype names (user IDs) aren't interchangeable although their users and markets overlap.
A little less anti-social. Skype's great at talking with people you know. It does nothing to help me find interesting, entertaining, or useful strangers. Almost nothing (do birthdays count?) at helping me curate my friends and cultivate my relationships over time. Skype backed off from supporting its Skypecasts service (hosted calls with moderated Skype chat backchannels) and Skype public chats (web links to group text chats). Skype will research how to help people do more during a conversation (collaboration) and how to add more of the value found in other social media (discovery, ridiculously easy group formation, social gestures, non-conversational messaging).
My advice to Apple and other mobile app store operators?
Be upfront and consistent with your developers. New policy? Set expectations through proper notice and change management. Developers need a playing field everyone can trust.
As for the rules, stick to technical merit.
Utility should be left to buyers.
A store should help users choose well, distinguish gems from rubble. A store should help users talk about products, before and after buying, with suppliers and with each other.
Tolerate crap in the store.
There should be horrible, disturbing, wastes of screen space. Just like there's lots of crap everywhere else on the Internet.
Mounds of trite and useless apps show developers experimenting with your medium, show evolutionary pressure is at work, induce newbies to jump in to do better. You're doing plenty by checking basic safety issues, like does-this-app-brick-my-iphone or is-this-app-malware.
Let the infringed sue the infringer, the offended mouth off, the developer express controversial notions and values. Let the marketplace of ideas choose freely. Stick to helping people find and run apps.
Many of these stores aren't localized beyond currency and payment, operating in English instead of Eesti, Chinese, and the other languages people use. For now, UK and US customers are shopping in Euros instead of Pounds or dollars. US customers also pay UK value added taxes.
This is a bare bones start, but an important one. Skype is preparing to build a platform for programmers. An "app store" helps partners make money from their investment in your platform.
The "extras" department isn't seeing much traffic yet according to publishers. When it does, this distribution channel could encourage hundreds of existing developers to invest in Skype certification.
The first products in the store:
Company
Product
Description
Price
Cucku
Cucku Backup
Free remote backup to friends, family or a second PC.
Freeware
Scendix Software
Pamela Call Recorder
Pamela Call Recorder, play cool sounds and auto Chat Reply.
€17.79 incl. VAT
Scendix Software
Pamela for Skype - Business Edition
Includes easy integration with MS Outlook as well as call recording and other great features.
€29.95 plus VAT
Scendix Software
Pamela for Skype - Professional Edition
Pamela Professional allows you to record Skype calls of any duration as well other great features.
€19.95 plus VAT
Scendix Software
Pamela for Skype - Standard Edition
Pamela allows you to record Skype calls.
€12.95 plus VAT
Scendix Software
Pamela mcePhone for Skype
mcePhone for Skype allows you to seamlessly integrate Skype and Pamela in Windows Media Center 2005 and Vista.
€17.79 incl. VAT
Scendix Software
Pamela Rich Mood Editor
Create cool HTML formatted Skype Mood Messages
Freeware
Scendix Software
PamFax for Skype (Mac)
Send faxes to any fax number in the world.
FREE (pay per page)
PrettyMay Team
PrettyMay Call Center for Skype - Standard version
Skype PBX Phone System for Small Business.
$200 incl. VAT
PrettyMay Team
PrettyMay Call Recorder for Skype - Basic version
Record Skype calls FREE within 15 minutes.
Freeware
PrettyMay Team
PrettyMay Call Recorder for Skype - Business version
Record Skype Calls, Store voicemails, auto answering.
$29.95 incl. VAT
PrettyMay Team
PrettyMay Call Recorder for Skype - Pro version
Record Skype Calls, Store voicemails, auto answering.
$24.95 incl. VAT
Netralia Pty Ltd
Skylook - make more of MS Outlook with Skype
Recording contacts office outlook calling.
€99.95 incl. VAT
CORRECTION: The Pamela and PamFax software products are from Scendix Software, not PamConsult, their professional service firm.
"As things are evolving quickly in this space, we will continue to keep our eye on Palm’s Pre and webOS platform, which seems to be getting good traction in its first weekend. But we have nothing to announce at this time" a Skype spokesperson told Jennifer Martinez per her Skype: No Palm Pre App for Now report.
Of course, if Skype opened up their Skype Lite server farm as a platform, developers could build their own Skype clients for the Pre.
There's a disconnect between what people say they want when you ask them (in focus groups, for example) and what they really want and do. We all say we like dark, rich, roasted coffee but many of us like weak, creamy coffee.
Horizontal segmentation can reveal that there are many variations of a product, each with their own appeal to the many variations among people. I like chunky tomato sauce, you like spicy. Until you reveal and test the clusters across a zillion dimensions, you'll never know how you should extend your product family.
While chefs have an idea that there is one right way to make a particular dish, they are wrong. The Platonic Ideal of a product misses that everyone in that restaurant has a different experience, different tastes, and that the chef's perfection of poached halibut will only produce an "average" happiness.
By searching for human variability and embracing human diversity, we'll find a truer path to true happiness.
Talk is a fundamental human activity and it's tough to create access to the Skype network from everywhere people talk (or would talk if they could).
So Skype gives us one Skype. It's squeezed into different shapes to adapt to different devices and operating systems, but it's the same Skype.
This is not enough. Skype knows it.
Skype is resource constrained. Everything they have is going into creating access to Skype dialtone. There is no way they can create 20 variations of Skype for Windows to serve different market segments. Let alone the thousands of variations by which people meet, engage, interact, play, learn, discover, fight, love, and experience each other.
So Skype needs a multiplier.
A multiplier that lets thousands of teams of developers fashion a Skype that meets their way of talking and being social.
We call that platforming. Giving a solid foundation, a platform, on which others can build.
Skype has several weak programming platforms now, all of them under review. The review is good.
Because for as big as Skype's market is now, it can be orders of magnitude larger. And Skype doesn't have the time or people or money to make Skypes for all those contexts.
Skype for WoW.
Skype for First Responders.
Skype for Shoppers.
Skype for Stock Brokers.
Skype for Grandparents.
Skype for the Hypersocial.
Skype for Twitterers.
Skype for Getting Things Done.
Skype for Lovers.
Skype for Musicians. (I met a company that has this as a business plan)
Skype for Projects.
Skype for Poken.
Skype for Sales.
Skype for Lawyers.
Skype for eBay Power Sellers.
Skype for Product Managers.
Skype for Hello Kitty.
Skype for IMDB and other movie lovers.
Skype for Manchester United.
And a thousand more.
Each with their own social and communication patterns, their own feature priorities, different measures of success, integration with different other systems, and support requirements.
What would they have in common? An underlying brand ("Skype inside"), one login, backup, in-network connection to other Skype users, encryption, contact lists, history.
And an ecosystem eager to pour a liquid Skype into the forms that make each community, each niche, each segment, each person very very happy.
The Karaka libraries manage Skype farms (many instances of Skype running in a data center) and bridge chat users to the Skype network through XMPP applications.
Skype farming is part of building a gateway. Fring, iSkoot, Eqo, Ribbit, IM+ and anyone else who wants to offer Skype chat, Skype presence, Skype profiles and other Skype data must have a gateway. Karaka helps you build your farm management system.
Neil Stratford, Vipadia's CEO, said "we needed the gateway to support our ClackPoint service - as a building block it seemed that it would be more widely useful, so we decided to release it publicly."
Scope of a generic Skype gateway?
Instance lifecycle management: creating, monitoring, and closing instances of Skype.
Instance virtualization: running your Skype instances on many servers/blades so you scale to meet demand.
Multisite hosting: minimizing latency (speeding up round trips) by routing conversations to the closest server with available resources
Skype client configuration: streamlining instances to avoid using a computer's memory, cpu and bandwidth, and to avoid memory leaks.
Session management: mapping outside clients to sessions in your gateway, even when they have flaky connectivity.
Security: the usual, but more so.
Modeling: associating Skype's data models for people, groups, chats, calls, to your own software and APIs.
What Karaka does and doesn't do:
Instance lifecycle management: Yes.
Instance virtualization: Yes.
Multisite hosting: No. You can use DNS SRV record load balancing to different sites.
Skype client configuration: Defaults to a basic config, but you can script your own.
Session management: Yes.
Security: Up to you. "We have an API to enable encrypted transmission of credentials, but otherwise we rely on the security of the associated XMPP infrastructure."
Modeling: Yes for those elements in the XMPP definition, No for SIP call elements.
In English:
Look at Vipadia's GPL'd libraries when you want to build a gateway to Skype, to have Skype inside your product or service.
The news release.
Vipadia is pleased to announce the release under the GPLv2 of Karaka, the open-source XMPP-Skype Gateway.
Existing Skype interconnect solutions focus on bridging voice even though the primary use of Skype is for instant messaging and associated presence data. Interconnecting with Skype messaging and presence has been a major stumbling block for many who wish to offer Skype interconnection to their network. Karaka bridges the XMPP and Skype clouds, removing this stumbling block by converting Skype messaging and presence to the popular XMPP protocol as used by, e.g., Google Talk.
Karaka is a scalable distributed XMPP transport that bridges instant messaging and presence between a user's XMPP and Skype accounts. In addition to full presence and instant messaging exchange, it also automatically detects Skype multi-party conversations, elevating them into XMPP conference rooms.
Karaka implements the XMPP standards XEP-0100 for gateway support, XEP-0045 for multi-user chats and XEP-0144 for roster exchange.
Vipadia <http://vipadia.com/> is a Cambridge, UK based startup that creates and innovates in the field of IP communications, specialising in Voice, Video, Messaging and Presence over IP.
Karaka uses the Skype API but is not endorsed or certified by Skype.
Wouldn't it be cool to have book readers that could IM and offer presence? Maybe take or make phone calls? Now that Amazon announced it will open its Kindle book readers to third party developers, Skype could build an app for this new platform. 
Join the Skype 5.X Text Chat Room