[rjedge54]

I received an email at work today from Microsoft Live @EDU program which we are partnered with for student email confirming what most people expected with the MS purchase of Skype. MS has confirmed not only that Skype will be replacing Messenger, but that messenger will be retired by the first quarter of 2013. More info and the official announcement is available at Skype is Replacing Messenger for Instant Messaging and Presence - Office 365 Technical Blog - Office 365 - Microsoft Office 365 Community. While this was expected, the speed at which they are going to retire Live Messenger is somewhat surprising and underscore further the need for a Skype client for the Playbook OS and BB 10. Maybe not right away but certainly by the first quarter of 2013. It will be interesting to see how the timing of this works out for both the BB10 phones and the Playbook OS.

[BerryClever]

I haven't used Skype before. Does Skype have text message options (like Messenger), or does this mean it is video only communication?

[diegonei]

Skype can do IM text, SMS text, cell/landlines calls, voice and video chat.

It is very hard to say right now... We have no idea if there will be a Skype app for BB10...

Microsoft and RIM aren't strangers. We've been seeing BING slowly replacing Google as a default, out of the box, search engine (thankfully we can manually change that) and the PlayBook does come with Bing Maps.

RIM has been pushing hard with developers and partnerships for BB10. All we can do is hope. You never know... The HTML5 built-in Skype for outlook.com may simply work on BB10's browser for all we know...

[rjedge54]

Yes, Skype has text messaging. In fact that is the only part of Skype that you can use on the Playbook. There are several apps in App World that allow you to use the text messaging capabilities of Skype, just nothing for the video capabilities.

[diegonei]

And bit hard to do video over compressed NOC data and without front facing cameras. The way I see it, a good number of people don't really mind that, what they want it the VoIP capabilities.

But then again, that too will be solved by BB10. It will just be a matter of "is there an app for skype?".

[Trini-34]

Interesting! Thank you for sharing!

[tarektoverso]

BlackBerry can use Oovoo and it will be a nice alternative to skype.

[diegonei]

Can we? Nice!

Just one question though, how many millions of users does oovoo have? Are all our friends there? What does it offer that will convince them to install yet another app?

Okay, sorry... Make it three questions. But they are honest ones.

Edit: I don't see support for any BlackBerry device anywhere in the oovoo homepage...

[Xopher]

Makes sense. After all, WLM and Skype now pretty much overlap features, and Skype probably has a better following, especially with people who pay for added services (like Skype-In and Skype-Out).

I don't think it will affect BB10 at all. It already sounds like RIM has a deal in place with M$, so there may be some cross-platform communication built in, sort of like AOL (and others) linking into FaceBook Chat and such. BBM will still probably be its own entity that goes through the NOC. If Skype is built in, then it will probably be like SMS messaging currently being able to be added to the BBM list.

[tarektoverso]

Can we? Nice!

...

Yes we can! ^^

And no, I'm not Obama.

[djdragon]

Oh so Skype is going to be like BBM on BB10. How nice for them.

[bldshd]

We're able to get skype on our BlackBerrys now arent we? The question is will it have video chat capabilities on BB10?

[icejourney1]

i would Surely like to know is Skype going to work on my PlayBook since its going to Replace Messenger??????

LET US PRAY!!!

Sent from my BlackBerry 9320 using Tapatalk

[PowderJockey]

I don't use Skype very often nor BBM. But I'm sure that someone could build an app, native or not, that is capable of connecting to all of the different communication channels similar to those used in Linux, ie: Kopete, Pidgin. People stuck in the Windows environment don't really know what is out there for use.

In this day and age of technological changes and capabilities, I can't see why this is a big problem for BB10/Playbook. Surely there is a developer out there that can get with it and design something.