Nokia buddies up with Skype

Today, the world's top cell phone manufacturer and top soft phone client announced they have partnered to bring Skype to Nokia's N-series of handsets.

Nokia's N97, which the company yesterday pegged for launch in June, will be the flagship Skype-enabled N-series device. The N97's address book will incorporate Skype contacts and enable presence for both voice and instant message chats when the device is connected to a 3G signal or Wi-Fi.

Last year, Skype debuted its Java-based Skype Lite client for mobile phones that enabled compatible devices with mobile VoIP, breaking the software into a market that CEO Niklas Zennstram called a challenging market that was taking much longer than expected to enter. The 3 Skypephone that was released in 2007, for example, was not a true mobile VoIP unit, and employed a proprietary workaround to deliver the service.

Skype debuted the Skype Lite client for Android at CES this year, which brought the open source operating system into the ranks of the over 100 Java-friendly handsets that offer the software.