14 DAY TRIAL // Recently, Skype VP Dan Neary, the company's vice president for the Asia Pacific region, let slip that the VoIP company has decided to drop the development of an application for Microsoft's upcoming Windows Phone 7, and now an official statement on the matter emerged. The company does not say whether a solution will arrive on the upcoming platform, but it does say that it is exploring the opportunities the operating system offers.
“In February, we withdrew our Skype Lite and Skype for Windows Phones apps because they didn't offer the experience our customers had come to expect. We explore rigorously opportunities presented by new mobile platforms, and Windows Mobile 7 is no exception. However, we don't discuss future platform developments, and have no further information to offer at this time,” is what a Skype representative told TechRadar on the matter.
Hopefully, Skype will consider Windows Phone 7 as offering enough opportunities for it to provide a software solution for the platform, yet things are still uncertain. Skype is one of the most popular VoIP and instant messaging solution on mobile phones, and, in case it is not present on handsets running under the upcoming Windows Phone 7, many will seek for other options, and might turn to handsets based on platforms that sport Skype, in detriment of Microsoft's OS.
Undoubtedly, Microsoft is hoping that the company will come up with an application for its new mobile operating system, so as to be able to offer users an enhanced experience. And since the experience is what determined Skype to cancel the solutions it initially offered for Windows Mobile-based devices, things might not be as simple as first believed. One way or the other, Skype will certainly announce exactly what it plans to do in this area before the end of the year, as the first Windows Phone 7 devices should land in 2010.