Skype for Nokia not available in U.S. Ovi store

Last week Skype announced they were officially launching a Skype app for Nokia phones, but the story turns out to be a little more complicated than that. According to Venture Beat, due to Skype's new deal with Verizon which will one day embed Skype on Verizon phones, the Symbian-based app will not be available for download in the U.S. via the Ovi store.

According to Venture Beat, Nokia spokespeople were caught off guard by Skype not releasing the U.S. version into the Ovi store. Skype later explained that they wanted to be able to draw more attention to their partnership with Verizon in the U.S. and if Nokia phone users wanted to use the Skype app, they could still download it from the Skype website.

The Nokia/Skype software is capable of running on 200 million Nokia mobile phones and plans are in the works to get the software running on other non-Nokia Symbian-based phones. The service offers free Skype-to-Skype calls anywhere in the world over WiFi and 3G.

For more:
- read the Venture Beat story

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