Skype to integrate with Windows Phone 'soon…' maybe

The military axiom "hurry up, and wait," could well become Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT)'s own when it comes to integrating its Skype VoIP and video calling app with its Windows Phone.

Skype--which was bumped from Windows Phone in favor of competitor Tango, at least as a placeholder in October--now is said to be poised to make its long-awaited appearance on the smartphone, well, "soon."

Microsoft originally had planned to roll out the integration by the end of the year (as in last year), but many pundits now expect it to be delayed until Mobile World Congress in February, with a full integration not happening until the entire OS is updated later in 2012.

Microsoft VP of the Skype division, Rick Osterloh, last week at CES said Skype was  "working on a Windows Phone product that will be coming out soon."

Microsoft bought Skype for $8.5 billion last summer, but decided to use Tango's video calling service with phones that run on the refreshed Windows Phone OS.

While Microsoft has said it plans to aggressively integrate Skype into its products, the timing of the deal meant that the company had to turn instead to Tango for a quick fix.

But Tango, which also operates on iOS and Android devices, may be in for quite a ride. The company hopes to use the break as a springboard to dominance in the video-calling market. It currently operates on 450 devices, including 30 tablets, and it works cross platforms.

Tango has 25 million registered users in 190 countries and is adding about 500,000 users every week, meaning it's growing about twice as fast as Skype did when it first launched.

"We are growing at an unprecedented rate," said Uri Raz, co-founder and CEO of Tango, in July. "There are 1.5 billion PCs in use worldwide and 95 percent of the world's computers run Windows. With this launch, we are well positioned to reach our goal of 100 million customers by this time next year."

The service hasn't had a difficult time finding funding, announcing in July that it was closing a $42 million Series B funding round. The company said it plans to use the money to speed up its product delivery cycle.

"We've been extremely lucky with timing," admitted Setton. "We came out as handset manufacturers were adopting front-facing cameras. and people were comfortable with video-calling because of the iPhone 4 and [Apple's video-calling app] Facetime."

Skype reported more than 170 million "monthly connected users" in its most recently-recorded quarterly period.

For more:
- see this Telegraph article

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