3 Skypephone international rollout

by: admin Monday, December 17th, 2007

Rating: Skype me

Skype might not be making much money with an ARPU of about EUR 0.75 and about 170 million customers but that might change with its partnership with 3. 3 has now rolled out the Skypephone in Sweden, Denmark and Austria.

I haven’t seen the Skype phone in the UK, but I did test it in a shop in Australia. It was an attractive light weight white design and available for AUS 129. There was a huge promotion in Australia for the Skype phone and it was prominently pushed in the shop window of every store.

From the press release:
Top 5 call destinations for UK 3 Skype customers:
1. UK
2. USA
3. Poland
4. Germany
5. France

Kevin Russell, CEO 3 UK, comments: ”The 3 Skypephone has brought the worlds of home and mobile broadband together. Our customers are now able to enjoy the same Skype experience at home as on the move. The rollout across our international business underlines our commitment to offer innovative services that challenge the status quo.”

What we think?
I would have thought that the best feature would be interactive messaging and micro-blogging on the phone. But I am just testing a Skype device from Netgear and to be honest the user interface takes me back 15 years to the first mobile.

Voice is still king – but with free services how is anyone making any money?