BlackBerry Handsets to Get Skype in May

It seems that BlackBerry users will soon have yet another popular application available for their devices, namely Skype. While a version of the software solution was recently announced to become available for Apple's iPhone, now we learn that another version is to be released for Research in Motion's devices as soon as May.

Skype's chief operating officer, Scott Durchslag, is reported to have announced in a press conference on Tuesday at the CTIA Wireless 2009 show in Las Vegas that the company intended to come to the market with a native application for all major smartphone operating systems, and while other platforms had been covered already, the only one to be left behind was the BlackBerry.

From what we've heard, the company will release a Beta version of the application in May, which will be available for BlackBerry Bold and BlackBerry Curve smartphones, with support for other BlackBerry handsets slated to come later during the ongoing year. The software solution will become available as a free download for RIM's users.

The popular features of Skype will also become available for all BlackBerry users around the world, including Skype-to-Skype calls, send/receive instant messages, make Skype calls at low rates to people on landline or mobile phones, receive calls to your online number on Skype, while also allowing users to see when their Skype contacts are online. For the time being, it seems that some of the features that are already available on other platforms, including voicemail and file transferring, will not become available on BlackBerries.

The ‘lite’ version of Skype coming to BlackBerries will reach ten countries at the beginning – Australia, Brazil (Rio de Janeiro & Sao Paulo), Denmark, Estonia, Finland, New Zealand, Poland, Sweden, the United States and the UK. The company will offer support for English in the first version of the application, but more languages will be added in the future. Furthermore, we’ve also learned that the company intends to work with mobile phone carriers to enable Skype-to-Skype calling for phones that don't have Wi-Fi.