Last month TechRadar did a side-by-side comparison of The Big 4 in mobile app stores: iPhone, Nokia, BlackBerry and Android. It was a pretty comprehensive size-up.
Zooming past Nokia and BlackBerry, iPhone and Android came out as the front runners in what TechRadar’s Miriam Brent calls “a two-horse race.”
Earning points for the iPhone: an intuitive interface that’s “unmistakeably Apple” and a browsing experience described as “a joy.”
Earning points for Android: Downloading is simple; navigation, a breeze. And as Miriam spotted:
“Currently all apps in the Android Market are freebies…That doesn’t mean there’s any lack of quality, though, with plenty of genuinely handy apps available like iSkoot for Skype access, MySpace Mobile and the ShopSavvy barcode scanner price comparison app.”
Nice! It’s good to be a selling point - especially where Android’s concerned. Miriam concluded what we suspected long ago: “the Android Market is certainly one to get excited about for the future.”
2008 was an action-packed ride here at iSkoot, and with the New Year having hastily arrived (already?), it is–of course–only fitting to take a look back at just how far we’ve come in the last 365.
Last January, we were just 2 months into celebrating 3’s UK launch of the iSkoot-powered 3 Skypephone - the first dedicated mobile Skype handset of its kind in the world. In the months that followed, the little Skype handset that took the UK by storm set off for the rest of 3’s global territories, launching in Australia, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Hong Kong, Ireland, and Italy. And somewhere along the way, the Skypephone picked up a Global Mobile Awards Silver Medal for Best Mobile Handset of the Year too.
While our success with the Skypephone picked up steam, iSkoot welcomed some fresh faces to the team as well - most notably our tireless CEO Mark Jacobstein, who’s brought to this outfit a lengthy track record of serial entrepreneurship and an exciting new vision for our company. Yosi Shaulson and Jim Hudak came aboard not long after, as VP of Finance & Ops and VP of Business Development, respectively.
Days later, we celebrated Yosi and Jim’s arrival alongside the renewal of our longtime partnership with Skype, which - in the wake of the 3 Skypephone’s resounding success on 3 continents around the world - awarded iSkoot exclusive rights to sell Skype-branded mobile products in territories spanning the rest of the globe - including South America, Africa and Europe. After all, we wouldn’t want Jim and Yosi to think we didn’t have enough for them to do, now would we?
With new leadership, renewed vows with Skype and a fully-integrated mobile device under our belts, the team decided it was time to make for sunnier pastures. We relocated our US headquarters from Cambridge, Mass to San Francisco - though not before iSkoot for Skype picked up a MITX Technology Award for Best Mobile Technology.
After getting settled in our West Coast locale this summer, iSkoot’s dreams for expansion kicked into high gear. In early September, we acquired social network IM client Social.IM as part of our scheme to grow beyond mobile VoIP to offer live-connection mobile solutions for a broader spectrum of web services. Of course, this didn’t meant our mobile VoIP efforts were becoming a thing of the past - just ask the folks at 3, who launched a shiny new incarnation of the iSkoot-powered Skypephone, the Skypephone S2, or the folks at Android, who featured iSkoot for Skype in the Android Market when Android’s inaugural device, the T-Mobile G1, hit shelves across the US this fall.
Having closed our Series C funding in November, everyone at iSkoot is now gearing up for a very big year ahead. And if 2008 was any indication - a very big year it will be.
Thanks so much to everyone who helped to make our success this past year possible - especially our iSkoot for Skype and Skypephone users around the world. We look forward to delighting you with a whole new generation of game-changing mobile products in the coming months.
Until then, our very best wishes for 2009. Happy New Year, All!
Seeing is believing. The folks at AndroidApps.com have posted a quickie video demo of iSkoot for Skype running on the new Android-powered T-Mobile G1. Feast your eyes, iSkoot Fans:
For those of you who might have missed the buzz, the first and long-awaited Android-powered mobile phone, the T-Mobile G1, finally hit stores today. And one of just a handful of cool apps made available right out of the box in Android’s Market (the only mobile VoIP app the Market currently offers) is none other than everyone’s favorite mobile Skype solution, iSkoot for Skype. Of course, it’s always been a big priority for us here at iSkoot to get iSkoot for Skype working across a wide variety of mobile devices; and designing our solution for one of the slickest new platforms around just makes our job that much sweeter.
We’re also fairly giddy to report that people are already liking what they see! The folks at Techcrunch –concluding after a week of testing the G1 that for them “it’s all about the apps”–gave kudos to iSkoot as one of their Top 10 Android Launch Apps this morning. As early as last week, before the T1 had even hit the shelves, early reviewers at jkOnTheRun and Switched were sizing up the new device, running test calls via iSkoot for Skype, and declaring that “it’s the third party applications that will truly set the device apart.” ZDNet also highlighted iSkoot as one of the Market’s cool new apps to try.
Guess there’s only one thing left to do…go grab yourself a G1! In the meantime, we’ll keep you posted as the buzz continues to unfold.
The folks at AndroidApps.com have posted a quickie video demo of iSkoot for Skype running on the new Android-powered T-Mobile 
