Truphone porta chiamate e IM Skype su iPhone ed iPod Touch

Om Malik anticipa il lancio della prossima versione di Truphone per iPhone e iPod Touch che includerà il supporto per chiamate e instant messaging con utenti Skype, Windows Live Messenger e Yahoo! Messenger.

La strategia di Truphone è rendere il software ancora più utile per aumentarne l’utilizzo, nella speranza che aumentino anche le chiamate verso rete PSTN.

La funzionalità sarà disponibile con un aggiornamento tra una settimana, il 12 gennaio. Vedremo se Truphone sarà riuscita a superare Fring e Nimbuzz. Personalmente per le chiamate Skype su iPhone mi affido a Nimbuzz.

The company is now taking a big step toward becoming an all-encompassing service by announcing support for Skype and other instant messaging. If you have Truphone installed on your iPhone or iTouch you can make (and receive) Skype calls and send instant messages to other Skype users by downloading the updated software on Jan. 12. So far, accessing Skype on an iPhone/iTouch has been hard. (According to our commenters, you can use Fring for iPhone or Nimbuzz iPhone apps to access Skype.)

I had tried to wrestle Skype CEO Josh Silverman on when he was going to release a client, but failed to get an answer from him. So, from that perspective, this is a welcome upgrade by Truphone. The company is also adding support to other messaging services as well. You can also access Twitter using the Truphone client. The offering is exclusively for iPhone and iTouch for now.

msn-pageGeraldine Wilson, who was recently appointed as the chief executive of Truphone, told me in a conversation earlier today that Truphone wants to “offer our users a comprehensive communications experience. We started out as a voice app but now we are broadening it to other applications.”

By doing so, Wilson and Truphone founder James Tagg believe that they will give Truphone users a reason to stay insider the application longer, creating more opportunities to make phone calls and bringing in much-needed revenues. “In a mobile environment it is hard to switch between different applications, and that is why we are creating a single application environment,” Tagg says.

Via Truphone Brings Skype To iPhone & iTouch