Skype is finally about to face a tough rival now as Vonage enters market with its new unlimited $24.99 a month international calling plan for iPhone and Blackberry users.
Vonage World Mobile will now provide customers with unlimited mobile international calls to more than 60 countries for one flat monthly rate as they call from their mobile device. For making the call, the caller need not buy any international calling card or type in special prefixes or pin codes. Instead they simply launch a Vonage app and talk to their peers. Vonage will cover 20 more countries than Skype which might give it a little upper hand however its Blackberry, iPod Touch and iPhone centric application and also Skype already providing the service at $12.95 a month service, the offer may not succeed to lure the market and customers.
Apart from this Russ Shaw, general manager of Skype’s mobile business has apologized for the delay for Skype versions for Nokia N97 and Blackberry Smartphone. Skype had few days before released the a beta version of Skype for Symbian to work on Symbian S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 and Feature Pack 2 devices, including a number of popular E and series handsets. In February 2009, Skype had announced that it would have an N97 version of Skype available in the third quarter and had also promised a ‘thin’ Skype client available as a free download for BlackBerry smartphones in May, initially a beta version for the BlackBerry Bold and BlackBerry Curve. But it seems there is still some more waiting to go.
