Skype pushes mobile video; buys Qik

Internet telephony player Skype has agreed to acquire Qik, a US-based mobile video sharing platform, which will give the VoIP firm greater capabilities in the mobile telephony market.

The purchase of Qik, which is based in Redwood City, California, and has 60 employees, is expected to close this month. The price of the deal has not been revealed.

Videos on the Qik platform, which works on mobile and desktop type devices, can be shared in real time or stored for sharing and archiving purposes. The Qik service is available on phones across the Android, iPhone, Symbian, Blackberry and Windows Mobile platforms, and comes pre-loaded on a wide variety of devices.

Skype said the acquisition will allow it to add video recording, sharing and storing capabilities to its offering as well as to get its hands on an engineering team with wireless streaming expertise.

The VoIP player has recently been pushing video capabilities as part of its offering and last week announced plans to launch a mobile video offering on the 4G LTE network of USA carrier Verizon Wireless. This new version of Skype from Verizon will be deeply integrated into a range of 4G smartphones to be available by mid-2011. These will all be Android-based devices with front- and rear-facing cameras.