Posts Tagged ‘3 Skypephone’
March 3, 2009
The INQ Social Mobile, the latest mobile brainchild from Hutchison Whampoa, took home the Gold at this year’s Mobile World Congress for Best Mobile Handset. That’s the second Global Mobile award in a row for Hutch, whom you all may remember snagged the Silver Medal last year for the 3 Skypephone.
What the judges had to say:
“The INQ represents a significant step towards the mobile device as a social networking hub and also represents superb value for money. Its approach to the deep integration of services such as Facebook outshines that of much costlier smartphones, and it presents a compelling proposition by treating the phonebook as the focal point of the device. With its ingenious ability to transform from phone to 3G modem by simply plugging it into your USB port, the INQ¹ delivers data services to the mass market and for an affordable price.”
This also happens to be the second year running that a handset featuring the iSkoot-powered Skype solution nabbed the industry’s highest international accolades. Coincidence?! C’mon now…In fact, INQ Mobile was kind enough to give iSkoot a ‘lil gratitude shout out on the company site. Thanks for the nod guys!
Of course, INQ Mobile’s award-winning handset happens to rock for a sweet set of features in addition to mobile Skype - this mighty little phone also has Facebook, Windows Live Messenger, Last FM and mobile email built right in. The phone is on the market today in the UK, Ireland and Australia, and INQ Mobile promises to start stocking more shelves throughout Europe and Asia soon. Keep an eye out!
And a big congrats to INQ Mobile. Job well done, guys.
Posted in: 3 Skypephone, New Things, awards | No Comments
Tags: 3 Skypephone, Global Mobile Awards, INQ, Mobile World Congress
January 2, 2009
What a difference a year makes.
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!
Posted in: 3 Skypephone, Management Team, T-Mobile G1, awards | No Comments
Tags: 3 Skypephone, Android, Jim Hudak, Mark Jacobstein, MITX Technology Awards, Skypephone S2, Social IM, T-Mobile G1, Yosi Shaulson
September 29, 2008
Everyone knows the 3 Skypephone made major waves when it hit stores last November. In it’s subsequent 10 months on the mobile scene, the infamous dedicated Skype handset has enjoyed rave reviews, stellar sales and a Silver Medal nod at the legendary Global Mobile Awards. Now with last month’s launch of the new and improved Skypephone S2, the mobile VoIP handset heard around the world is back in the spotlight, and our friend Frank Meehan, GM and Director of Handsets at 3, is happy to tell the story.
In an interview at the Mobilize conference in SF last week, Frank explained how the 3 Skypephone came together, pointing to iSkoot’s mobile Skype solution as a key ingredient:
“Every carrier (besides us) relies upon big voice and SMS revenues. For us, Hutchinson, every decision is made upon a financial viewpoint. The first breakthrough for the Skypephone was that we found Skype to be a powerful and disruptive technology, but we couldn’t handle the heavy packet load it would put upon our system. Then we came across iSkoot. Which, at the time, was a small company who figured out how to use Skype system and take a Skype call and transfer it over a circuit. With this development, Skype calls become very clear, in fact, we have customers who say calls are clearer on the handset than on a computer.”
iSkoot’s mobile-to-VoIP technology strikes again! Clearer Skype calls than on a PC? Aw, shucks Frank. 
Posted in: 3 Skypephone, The Word on Mobile VoIP | No Comments
Tags: 3 Skypephone, Frank Meehan, S2
June 16, 2008
Ah, hardware. You can’t live without it, but nonetheless it seems to have a funny way of deciding all on its own when (and how) it’s going to suicide mission on you.
Eerily, Friday the 13th left more than one case of “learned that one the hard way” in its wake. This iSkoot blogger recently witnessed the watery demise of her BlackBerry Curve in the Barton Springs of Austin, Texas. Last week, Dameon Welch-Abemathy (a.k.a. PhoneBoy) reported the untimely end (in spite of his best attempts at resuscitation) of his MacBook at the Ottowa airport. Jarring as these hardware casualties may be, they do have an interesting way of bringing into sharp relief those Web 2.0 features that are truly indispensable. Case in point: our favorite VoIP service, Skype.
Dameon warns those folks with a serious dependency on PC-based Skype to ready a contingency in case your computer suddenly bites the big one. A handy alternative? iSkoot for Skype of course! Dameon points out that iSkoot for Skype was prepped and ready on his Nokia handsets to save the day when his Macbook met its bitter end. Nice! And an interesting reminder that iSkoot for Skype doesn’t just free you from your PC, it can actually come to the rescue when your PC leaves you in the lurch.
And for those of us who watched an iSkoot-enabled BlackBerry take a fatal dip in Barton Springs? Lucky I work at iSkoot, I was able to sneak a 3 Skypephone out of the office to use for a couple of days. Jealous? 
Posted in: The Word on Mobile VoIP | No Comments
Tags: 3 Skypephone, iSkoot for Skype, Phoneboy
May 23, 2008
Our friend Jim Courtney over at Skype Journal knows a thing or two about the happenings in the world of Canadian wireless. In his piece “The Canadian Wireless Scene Gets Interesting,” Jim spent some time weighing the implications of Canadian wireless operator Rogers being the only GSM service provider in the country.
With Roger’s singular claim on GSM, Jim surmises that there are really “four potential suppliers” for the mobile operator from the smartphone camp:
* Apple, with its iPhone which requires GSM
* RIM, whose WiFi -enabled 8×20 Blackberries require GSM to be able to use the UMA/GAN feature
* Nokia, who basically only builds GSM-compatible devices
And…
* iSkoot with their Skypephone which requires GSM
That’s what we call a line up.
But until the Skypephone - which is currently available in Europe, Asia and Australia - makes the hop across the pond, Jim reminds that our FREE iSkoot for Skype software enables mobile Skype calling today on a variety of devices, including those BlackBerry and Nokia smartphones - plus a load of others. So get your mobile Skype on, Canada!
Posted in: 3 Skypephone | 2 Comments
Tags: 3 Skypephone, Jim Courtney, Rogers, Skype Journal
May 22, 2008
In our book, you can never hear too much of a good thing - especially when that good thing is more news that the 3 Skypephone is owning the show in the UK.
The latest batch of proof comes from AdMob’s April 2008 Mobile Metrics report: In its first month of AdMob Mobile Metrics tracking, the 3 Skypephone is already grabbing enough ad requests to place it in the UK’s top 5 handsets! The first-of-its-kind, iSkoot-powered device accounts for more than 2.7% of AdMob’s total traffic in the United Kingdom, and is running neck-and-neck with Sony Ericsson and Nokia’s top devices. Go 3 Skypephone, go!
AdMob serves ads for more than 4500 mobile web sites. It’s monthly report offers a snapshot of the data in their network to provide insight into trends in the mobile ecosystem. You can inspect AdMob’s full Mobile Metrics report for April 2008 right here .
Posted in: 3 Skypephone | No Comments
Tags: 3 Skypephone, AdMob
May 20, 2008
They say good things come in threes! iSkoot has just gotten its third developer award finalist nomination of the season - this time for a BREW 2008 Developer Award in the “Best Community/Social Networking Application” category. And we’re one of just three finalists in our category! Coincidence?
The BREW 2008 Developer Awards features seven total award categories of commercial and pre-commercial BREW applications and services that represent the best and brightest in wireless data innovation. Winners in each of the categories will be revealed and honored in a special ceremony next Wednesday, May 28 at the BREW 2008 Conference in San Diego, CA.
The iSkoot-powered 3 Skypephone, which utilizes iSkoot technology integrated into the device’s BREW OS, has already picked up a Global Mobile Award Silver Medal for “Best Mobile Handset.” Will lightning strike twice? We’ll find out soon enough! Stay tuned.
Posted in: 3 Skypephone, awards | No Comments
Tags: 2008 BREW Developer Awards, 3 Skypephone
May 16, 2008
When you’re in the business of connecting people with their friends and family all over the world, you’re bound to get the “warm fuzzies” from time to time. The stories from our users are awesome - college students Skypeing home to Japan while strolling around campus in California? It’s a beautiful thing!
But with a mobile VoIP solution that connects users like never before AND jives with the carrier business model, the love doesn’t end there. When interviewed by Monica Alleven of Wireless Week recently, our CEO Mark Jacobstein pointed to our collaborations with Skype and 3 as great examples of how when mobile VoIP is done right, it doesn’t rock the business model boat. In the case of our carrier-friendly, circuit-switch-based iSkoot for Skype solution, our approach is–as Mark puts it–all about “harmonizing.”
In her piece “Calling our Neighbors…In China?” Monica gives a quick breakdown of the carrier appeal of iSkoot’s mobile VoIP solutions:
“The value proposition goes something like this. People aren’t likely to call their friends or family in other countries using their mobile phones because they don’t want high toll charges. Instead, they’re going to wait until both parties are in front of their PCs and use something like Skype. But if you add iSkoot to the equation, the mobile operator can offer cheap international calling and capture minutes that otherwise wouldn’t get used.”
And that’s just the beginning. Pointing to our deployment with 3, Mark reminds that calls via the Skype/iSkoot application don’t involve any termination fees either, which are “traditionally the big concern for mobile operators after network buildout and payroll.”
In 3’s case, they decided to take this feather-in-cap and run with it, offering 3 Skypephone users those Skype-to-Skype calls for FREE. Thanks to iSkoot’s carrier-friendly architecture, that’s a pretty appealing customer acquisition tool right there.
And from the look of global 3 Skypephone sales to date, we’d say a lot of new people are feeling the love.
Posted in: 3 Skypephone, Management Team, The Word on Mobile VoIP | No Comments
Tags: 3 Skypephone, iSkoot for Skype, Mark Jacobstein, Wireless Week
May 9, 2008
Jahangir Raina over at iLocus nabbed a few minutes with Mark Jacobstein last week to discuss the nuts and bolts of the business model behind our carrier-deployed mobile VoIP solutions. You can check out the full Q & A here.
In the meantime, we’ve got a few of the finer points of the conversation right here!
On why iSkoot’s low-cost international calling solution is a friend, not a foe, to the operator, Mark comments:
“For Skype-to-Skype calls what the operators have determined is that we are not cannibalising their business. In fact we are adding to their business because if I am on Skype and my friend in Hong Kong is on Skype, I was not going to call that person for two dollars a minute anyway. I would have waited to Skype them over PC and completely cut out the operator. So by putting Skype on mobile phone at least the operator is able to use up the free minutes. With SkypeOut which involves calls to a non-Skype user, you probably had no choice but to call with very expensive ILD rates. So some of the operators prefer not to turn SkypeOut on. At least not at first. They are however realistic about the ILD rates substantially reducing over time with the calling cards and callback and Skype etc. At some point therefore they will also turn on SkypeOut.”
On the technical challenges facing mass implementation of mobile VoIP:
“A couple years back people thought that mobile VoIP is as simple as putting a client on mobile phone just like putting it on PC. 3g had good enough speeds on paper. Had that turned out to be true, iSkoot would not exist. I think the idea of using circuit switched network thought of by our founders was brilliant.”
And on the effect and reception of iSkoot-powered mobile products from multinational operator 3:
“iSkoot-led service is not only available on Skypephone, but the capability is preloaded on every single H3G phone that is being sold now. Skypephone is to H3G what iPhone is to AT&T.“
Posted in: Management Team, The Word on Mobile VoIP | No Comments
Tags: 3 Skypephone, iLocus, Jahangir Raina, Mark Jacobstein, voice vs. data
April 24, 2008
CNN.com’s technology journalist Cherise Fong highlighted iSkoot today in a piece called “The Revolution Will Be Mobilized,” which looks at the myriad of ways that friends and family stay connected on their PCs, and what’s being done on the scene today to transfer that connectivity to the mobile world.
Cherise points out that when it comes to Voice over IP, “it’s clear today that Skype itself is the big winner in the VoIP game.”
Cherise noted that:
“Most recently, iSkoot has extended its partnership with Skype, following its collaboration with mobile operator 3 for the global launch of the 3 Skypephone in October 2007, which was the first mass-market Skype-enabled handset as a carrier-integrated solution for mobile-VoIP IM services.“
That new partnership is geared up for us to deliver more cool new products like the 3 Skypephone to more more places than ever in the coming year. Mobile revolution, here we come!
Posted in: 3 Skypephone, The Word on Mobile VoIP | No Comments
Tags: 3 Skypephone, agreement, CNN.com, Skype
