Skype to offer Intel-only features, but why?

Conference calling is coming to Skype, but only for users of newer Intel CPUs …

Voice-over-IP is promising in no small part because it's an Internet phenomenon. Using the global network to route calls is a powerful way to improve telecommunications reach while reducing overall cost. Since it is built upon the IP protocol, VoIP could become a lot like e-mail: standardized, cross-platform, and easy to use. And as we showed with our guide to customizing Asterix, VoIP allows for some pretty powerful customizations, too.

Yet some are worried that, like so many other promising markets, the VoIP territory could end up with a handful of fiefdoms and incompatible features. Those fears are likely going to be amplified by a new and interesting collaboration between Skype and Intel. The two companies today announced that they are partnering to optimize Skype for Intel's dual-core processor-based CPUs, and they have announced the first fruits of this cooperation.

Meet 10-way calling. Skype 2.0 now supports free, ten-way voice conference calling, but there's a catch. To use it, you'll need a laptop with the Centrino Duo mobile technology package, or a PC using a Pentium D, Pentium Extreme Edition processor, and/or the Viiv platform. AMD users, PowerPC Mac users, and anyone with a PC older than a few months need not apply. You don't have that many friends anyway.

Later this year the two companies will also unveil video calling that will be "optimized" for Intel's newer technology, although it is not clear at this time whether or not it will be "exclusive" in the same way that the conference calling feature is billed. To be sure, the two companies are planning big things together, pointing to future collaboration on VoIP technologies aimed at WiFi and WiMax networks, as well.  What's really going on here?

"We want to make communicating over the Internet simple and accessible," said Alistair Shrimpton, general manager of Skype UK. "Through our partnership with Intel we can ensure that Skype performs better than any other Internet calling application and drive widespread business and consumer adoption."

On the surface, Shrimpton's comments seem contradictory: by making these features available to just a small slice of the market by virtue of exclusivity, how exactly does that translate to a general performance advantage for Skype against its competitors? I don't think it does.

What it does translate into, however, is corporate image. Skype may be the company that eBay bought for an astoundingly high price, but it's also a VoIP company that's more popular with geeks than with just about everyone else. Skype is looking to change that. While the company is still playing the hip and cool card, features such as 10-way calling are just masked corporate fodder. Think about it. When's the last time you heard someone say, "I'm going to go setup our seven-way call." No, it's called conference calling, and it's all about the suit world. It also sounds boring in a way that OMG 10-way calling !!!1111 does not.

An Intel-Skype partnership is about high visibility in the business world, and if there is a possibility that voice and video communications will be heading to the PC in a major way in the next few years, you can bet Intel will want to beat other players to the punch, while Skype will get to enjoy the benefits for partnering with the corporate world's default choice in hardware. It may be a dangerous gamble in the end, however, because there's nothing inherently flawed about other technology platforms that makes conference calling and the like impossible, and so exclusivity could end up hurting the, uh, duo.

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