Skype Adds Personalization, Mobility

by Ed Oswald

Skype on Thursday released a refresh of its popular voice chat software, adding features that it hopes will solidify its position as the market leader. Improvements to sound quality, increased personalization, and new mobility options are just a few of the additions included in the release.

The company claims some 56 million registered users, with 170,000 new registrations per day. Skype was recently acquired by eBay in a $2.6 billion deal announced September 12.

Skype 1.4 incorporates two premium features into the client. Call forwarding will allow a user to forward calls to another Skype user for free, or to a traditional phone line for a fee using the company's SkypeOut service.

Personalization is also now possible, working much like a mobile phone. Customers will pay a small fee of 1 euro, or about $1.20 USD to personalize the client with pictures, sounds and ringtones. Three companies have partnered with Skype to enable such options: American Greetings, Qpass, and Wee World.

A new wizard will also help to simplify the Skype registration and initial use of the product. The company says that as a result, it will take users about three minutes to get started with version 1.4.

Skype CEO Niklas Zennstrom says his company has always worked to give their users what they want.

"Today, we are thrilled to be delivering on this promise by offering a new version of Skype which both new and existing callers will find adds powerful and innovative new features like call forwarding and personalization, as well as offering our best ever sound quality on our simplest product to install and use," he said.

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