Skype announcements

Skype's big news out of the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is the continuing march toward mobility: Skype anytime, anywhere.

Scott Durschlag, Skype's chief operating officer , shared the vision at a press conference and at the main blog.

Durschlag said: "One of our major priorities is to let you take Skype with you wherever you go, so you can use Skype anytime, anywhere, on any device or network. To make this possible, we've been hard at work developing versions of Skype which will run on your mobile devices, in addition to continuing to innovate with our desktop products."

He announced two new additions to Skype's product line:

--A new lite version of Skype Android-powered mobile device. The software enables users to chat with or call other Skype users, as well as call landlines and mobiles around the world. It runs on Android-powered mobile devices, beginning with the T-Mobile G1, as well as more than 100 other Java-enabled mobile phones from Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and LG. It's now available for the first time for US users.

You can download it now by visiting the Skype website on your mobile phone, or if you're an Android user, visit the Android Market. Following our announcement last month of a new Skype for Windows Mobile 2.5 beta, Skype is now available on nearly 200 mobile devices.

--Skype will be available to the new Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), mobile devices with larger screens and enhanced battery life. Skype will be available for free voice and video from the palm of your hand. The first version of Skype for MIDs will be based on the Intel Atom processor and Moblin-based Linux OS. Skype will be pre-installed on these devices later this year.

More information on the MIDs Beta are available from the Garage blog.

Durschlag said: "These two products represent a big step towards our goal of making Skype available everywhere. Now, following the recent updates to Skype for Windows Mobile last month and the recent introductions of the 3 Skypephone S2 and INQ1 mobile handsets, we're making progress towards our goal. Over the next 6-12 months, you'll see Skype become available on an even wider range of mobile handsets and platforms."

He noted that a final version of Skype 4.0 for Windows will be available soon with enhanced sound.

All this, and it's only January. 2009 is shaping up to be a big year for Skype.

Arabic is one of the most common languages on the planet.

Estimates vary. But hundreds of millions of people speak Arabic.

Now Skype has a Web page for Arabic speakers.

Oksana Morina gives the details on the main Skype blog.

She notes: "Skype is all about conversation - and we realize that it's sometimes hard to have a conversation with someone when you don't speak the same language.

"That's why we try to add new languages to our repertoire when we can, and today we've launched an Arabic version of the Skype website. For the hundreds of millions of Arabic speakers across the globe, Skype now speaks the way you do."

More than 45,000 of you spoke in e-mail surveys, blog comments, and so on, and Skype listened, redesigning its interface, introducing some new features and restoring some popular old ones.

Skype today launched its new Version 4 Beta 2 for Windows, which is available for downloads.

Mike Bartlett, director, Windows Product Management, said on the main blog that Beta 2 "includes a number of changes, and most noticeably we've brought back contact groups - although we've renamed it contact categories to avoid confusion with group conversations. We've also done a lot of work on resizing and introduced a view which behaves very much like older versions: compact view."
Bartlett provides a tour of Beta 2: