Three
Skypephone

The Skypephone was a compact 3G candy bar which, at the time, offered an extraordinarily high level of integration with the Skype service. Examples of this included the seamless merging of the Skype contact list with the handset’s address book as well as “presence” information in the main address book which meant users did not have to continuously switch between two disparate contact lists. It had a prominent Skype button on the keypad that provided instant access to the Skype service and provided an immediate view of those contacts currently online. The handset was developed by Skype and 3 in partnership with Qualcomm, using Qualcomm's BREW platform to enable Skype to work with core handset features such as address book and messaging. It was manufactured by Amoi. When it was launched in the UK it had an unrivalled price of just £49.99 for a 3G phone which sent shockwaves through the industry given that in addition to the Skype support, it also had a two-megapixel camera, Bluetooth support and an MP3 player. Three’s strategy was to target users seeking to make “free” international calls to overseas Skype users at a time when international calling was extremely expensive. 3 promised that Skype-to-Skype calls would always be free as long as users were “in contract” or their credit was topped up monthly. It was initially available in the UK market and went on to be released in Australia, Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Italy, Ireland, Macau and Sweden. Below is an advert for the phone that appeared on the Skype website at the time. Retrieved from the Wayback Machine.