Exclusive: Nimbuzz, a popular mobile communication service provider, has been asked by Skype to remove support for all Skype services, effective October 31st.

The startup will be announcing the news to its 30 million or so registered users later today.

Nimbuzz sees the decision to ask for the removal of support for Skype services in line with the communication software giant’s “mandate to disconnect with all third-party VoIP services ahead of its impending IPO“.

Skype, in turn, calls bullshit and claims Nimbuzz simply stopped communicating with them quite recently, following several months of discussions about Nimbuzz’ compliance with its API Terms of Use and End User Licence Agreement.

Update: Nimbuzz has posted about the situation on its blog.

You may remember that the exact same thing happened between Skype and Nimbuzz rival fring back in July. Skype at the time also stated that it tried to resolve a dispute with fring amicably for a considerable amount of time, only to arrive at a point where they saw themselves forced to threaten legal action over “misuse of Skype software”.

From October 31st onwards, Skype users will also find themselves unable to chat, send messages or call their contacts on Nimbuzz, and vice versa. Nimbuzz points out users will remain free to communicate with their contacts using other VoIP/SIP, instant messaging services and social networks, including Facebook, Yahoo, Windows Live Messenger, AIM, Google Talk, Twitter, MySpace, ICQ and others.

In both the Nimbuzz and fring case, of course, it’s their millions of users who also use Skype that are the ones getting screwed over here. It’s also telling that Skype has started requesting the bigger third-party service providers to remove support for Skype services very recently, while both fring and Nimbuzz have offered Skype support for many years …

Said Evert Jaap Lugt, CEO of Nimbuzz:

Skype’s decision is unfair to its own and our users. People want to choose how they communicate and to be able to make calls and send messages, regardless of service, social network, device or operator network. Nimbuzz gives them the freedom to do so, Skype does not.

For what it’s worth, Skype responded with this canned statement:

“Skype has been in discussions with Nimbuzz regarding our concern and belief they were using Skype’s software in ways which it was not designed for, in a breach of our API Terms of Use and End User Licence Agreement.

Skype offered to meet Nimbuzz and discuss the issue however we have not heard back from them since our last correspondence to them in early August. As we have said before, Skype encourages openness and supports developers to build products that work with the Skype platform.”

Coincidentally, both Nimbuzz and fring recently started offering their own paid VoIP services to users (NimbuzzOut and fringOut, respectively), so my educated guess is that that’s the real reason why Skype is singling out these companies in particular (for now).

For all its popularity, competitor eBuddy does not offer support for Skype services and, as far as I know, never has.

Nimbuzz is not a small player in the mobile messenger / VoIP space either, any way you look at it. The startup recently announced that it has surpassed 150 million downloads and has 30 million registered users across all major mobile operating systems. Moreover, Nimbuzz claims 3.65 billion mobile voice minutes have been logged over the past year.

The company has raised $25 million to date, and one of its shareholders is Naspers / MIH Group, the multinational media group which boasts investments in Tencent, Mail.ru, Facebook investor DST and other notable industry players.

Time will tell if both fring and Nimbuzz have strong enough offerings, and loyal enough users, to stand their ground against the many alternatives, no longer bearing in-app Skype support. It will also be interesting to see if Skype will move to demand more third-party clients to remove support for its services in the future.

We’ll keep you posted.

The native functionality allows the free app to run in the background without interruption, have alert notifications ‘pushed’ to the BlackBerry device’s home screen and match notifications with the phone’s sound profiles.

The program is first-generation, and Nimbuzz promises more features are forthcoming. For instance, the app can today only be used for instant messaging conversations on BlackBerry smartphones, because the relevant API only very recently gained support for VoIP applications (the startup said to expect integration of Internet calling features in the app shortly).

Nimbuzz for BlackBerry currently supports online chat through Skype, Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, Facebook, MySpace and more. Both installation and usage of the communication tool are free of charge.

Nimbuzz, backed by $25 million in venture capital, notably also recently won the ‘Connect On Blackberry’ award at RIM’s BlackBerry Alliance Program’s EMEA Innovation Awards in Rome. To date, over 38 million BlackBerry devices have been sold, and Nimbuzz has been installed on about 12 million of them.

The new native app should work on all BlackBerry smartphones running OS v4.6 or higher, including the Storm, Bold, Tour, Pearl Flip and BlackBerry Curve 8900 smartphones.

Nearly five months after launching a free, ad-supported application for iPhone and iPod Touch, eBuddy is today introducing a paid version of the program, which enables users to communicate with contacts across various instant messaging clients.

Priced at $4.99 (iTunes link), which in my opinion is fairly expensive, the app lets you chat with friends on Facebook Chat, ICQ, Gtalk, AIM, MySpace, Windows Live Messenger or Yahoo Messenger alike.

Unlike its gratis counterpart, eBuddy Pro for iPhone and iPod Touch is advertisement-free, and boasts a couple more features that the company hopes people will be willing to pay for:

- push notifications for incoming messages when the app is closed (for up to 3 days)
- the ability to transfer photos from the device to friends without leaving the app interface
- the option to set your display picture from your camera or photo library

The application also lets you switch between chat conversations by swiping the screen of your iPhone or iPod Touch (handy) and sends out a buzzer when the device is shaken. The Netherlands-based company promises more features will be included in future updates (e.g. landscape mode).

Ebuddy says over 2.5 million people have download the free iPhone application to date, while (only) some 180,000 downloads have been registered for the Android app. The free iPhone app was ad-free until today – and the company recently partnered with India’s InMobi to increase its mobile advertising revenue and will start doing that now that the premium app is available in the App Store.

Alternatives to eBuddy Pro include IM+ and Beejive (both cost more – feature sets vary).

Nimbuzz has released a new version of its iPhone application (iTunes link), which has already proven to be quite a hit on the platform: the app has consistently done well on App Store ranking charts in a wide variety of countries worldwide. In the startup’s home turf The Netherlands as well as in France, Nimbuzz claims 1 out of 5 iPhone or iPod Touch owners have installed and use the tool on a regular basis.

The new version of the app brings file-sharing in the cloud capabilities, VoIP calling on a range of IM networks (both over Wi-Fi and 3G) and push notification with home screen alerts of both incoming calls or chats through Nimbuzz or third-party networks like Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk. Finally, the iPhone app now boasts location-awareness, which allows Nimbuzz contacts to share and retrieve their physical locations on a Google map.

The Mac desktop client is nothing spectacular but it doesn’t hurt to have another decent, good-looking IM and social network aggregator application for Apple computers. The unified app supports connections via Facebook, AIM, MySpace, Google Talk (Orkut), Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger (MSN), ICQ and more. Nimbuzz says its product for Mac is the only IM product to provide high-quality VoIP calling direct from the desktop among IM buddies on Nimbuzz and the more popular IM networks.

JAJAH CEO Trevor Healy says the service has attracted 25 million users since its launch, which means every user has on average made 40 calls through the company’s IP telephony platform if we use back-of-the-envelope calculations. By comparison, rival Skype boasts over 405 million registered users globally and in a recent press release claimed people have made more than 100 billion minutes worth of free Skype-to-Skype calls alone. Other competitors include Jaxtr, Truphone and Nimbuzz.

If you’re interested: the 1 billionth call was attributed to San Francisco resident Ila Vasudev Zeff, a 29 year-old woman who was calling her mother in India.

The eBuddy application for Google’s open mobile OS is now available for free on the Android Market, and users can thus benefit from a single ID to chat with their friends on third-party communication platforms such as Facebook, Gtalk, Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, ICQ and more.

No Skype chat yet, which is a bit of a bummer, but apparently the startup is looking to add that functionality in their mobile clients in addition to all the other ones currently supported. I wonder which startup will be the first to bring Skype chat to Android, since neither Meebo nor eBuddy currently support it and both Nimbuzz and fring, competitors that do support Skype IM through their mobile clients, have yet to make their way to the open platform.

What I like about the eBuddy application is that it has the ability to run in the background, so when you receive a phone call the IM service will keep running and even reconnect you automatically when the internet connection is lost. If you maintain multiple friend lists on instant messaging tools, eBuddy neatly organizes all your contacts in one list so you don’t even need to think about which third-party service you should be connecting to, and lets you seamlessly jump from one chat conversation to the next.

On a sidenote: I can’t grasp why Android Market doesn’t offer a search function on its regular website – only on mobile – but if you ever want to look for applications that are available on Android you might want to check out Cyrket.com. The eBuddy app is listed here.

I got eBuddy, which is backed by a healthy €11.5 million (which currently converts to approximately $15.6 million), to share some numbers to get a feel of the traction it’s getting in the market, and came away fairly impressed.

These are the numbers they pitched me: 20 million mobile downloads of the J2ME mobile client since its launch in June 2007, 5+ million unique monthly mobile users on eBuddy Mobile, and with almost 14 million downloads of eBuddy Mobile Messenger on GetJar the top ranked mobile program on the platform.

Stellar upwards-pointing trends indeed, but this type of hockey stick growth is of course no guarantee that all these new users will be efficiently monetized over the long run. Only time will tell if eBuddy finds a way to turn its successful product into a profitable business.

The actual amount raised was not shared, but we’re told that the third round is pretty much on par with the Series B round the company closed in August 2007 (estimated at $12 million when we reported it, but more in the vicinity of $10 million according to information we received later) and that it’s “most definitely not a downround”.

Fring markets an entirely free, ad-supported mobile application that allows users to engage in Web-based social activities, including VoIP calling, instant messaging and social networking. The startup says it intends to use the extra funding to make the app compatible with more mobile environments (Android, anyone?), support more Web-based community services, introduce a couple of new features and make some usability improvements across the board.

When the economy started crumbling last Fall, fring let go 20% of its workforce, although at the time it stated revenues were actually on the upside but it needed to cut costs to extend its runway through 2009.

The company is up against a slew of well-funded startup rivals, including Nimbuzz, Truphone and eBuddy, but also increasingly against Skype, which is eyeing the mobile handset market more and more.

You could already make free calls to your buddy list over WiFi, but as of today Nimbuzz also enables VoIP calls to landlines and mobiles via Skype-Out, and thanks to partnership agreements with global SIP providers like Gizmo5, Vyke and SIPgate you can now also call over WiFi using the iPod Touch device. And for those not on WiFi, Nimbuzz is introducing a so-called “Dial-Up VoIP” option that lets users make calls over 3G in over 50 countries, using a fresh interface with a full dial-pad (screenshots below). Update: to clarify, what Nimbuzz does is dial a local access number that connects to their VoIP servers when WiFi is unavailable.

Another new feature allows Twitter updates via the Personal Message option in the mobile social messenger app.

Solid stuff.

In other news, Nimbuzz has announced a deal with major Italian social networking portal Giovani.it, which will incorporate its communication services into the community website (which has over 2 million active users). This is very similar to an earlier agreement Nimbuzz reached with Germany’s largest social networking portal, StudiVZ.

Nimbuzz has raised over $25 million in three rounds, mostly from Luxembourg-based Mangrove Capital Partners. The company claims it is growing at 20,000 new users per day now, with a 25% active user base in over 200 countries.

Of course, the operators won’t be jumping up and down from joy over the news.

The first Nokia device to get the Skype integration will be the N97, beginning in Q3 of 2009, followed by (unnamed but reportedly high-end) N-series devices. Leveraging N97’s WiFi and 3G connectivity, users will be able to communicate with Skype-to-Skype voice calls, as well as make mobile and landline Skype calls at reasonable prices. We should note that Sony Ericsson already has some sort of solution for Skype by offering a ‘panel’ for the app on its Xperia X1 device (which runs Windows Mobile 6.1), and Skype already had a mobile ‘lite’ version in beta which works fine on compatible LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson phones.

Bringing Skype’s internet calling app on-board is one thing, but I am more excited about the presence management. The fact that the application will tap into your contact list to see who else is online or not, and enable you to chat with your friends and co-workers either by voice or text instantly, is a powerful feature.

But what does this mean for those mobile VoIP startups for whom one of the prime reasons of existence in the first place is supporting Skype functionality on mobile handsets, like fring, Nimbuzz and Truphone?

I got in touch with executives at all three startups to get a reaction on the news. Unsurprisingly, they call the move a validation of their services and are confident they won’t be pushed aside any time soon.

Tobias Kemper, Head of Communications at Nimbuzz, says the fact that Skype will come pre-installed on mobile devices is actually going to help normalize the use of VoIP applications (and particularly Skype) and thus boost their own growth. He also added that the integrated approach of Nimbuzz, which combines a variety of voice and text chat services into one app, is still in demand.

Geraldine Wilson, CEO of Truphone, says much of the same by declaring that this will only increase the awareness and uptake of these kinds of VoIP applications on mobile, which is good for Truphone too. She also cites the interoperability with Skype in combination with support for other communication services to be a big advantage for their users.

I’ll update this post with fring’s view as soon as it gets in, but you should also read up on what iSkoot is doing by moving beyond Skype for mobile phones with the release of a more general application.

I agree that bringing Skype to a select number of Nokia devices isn’t going to ‘kill’ any of the service providers I mentioned, and the aggregation of communication services is still a very good selling point in a world were people are connected through multiple social networks and instant messaging clients. That said, for the VoIP part it won’t get any better than having Skype pre-installed on a phone that links up your contacts to the application instantly. While companies like fring, Nimbuzz and Truphone are scrambling to turn their fast-growing legion of users into a profitable business, Skype has more runtime and more leverage to push free internet calling to mobile phone users.

But as I mentioned before, the carriers are not going to be happily standing on the sidelines as things progress.

StudiVZ, which counts over 12 million users spanning across Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, will become the first in what Nimbuzz refers to as a series of international networking sites to integrate its technology, bringing real-time web and mobile communication capabilities to online communities. Nimbuzz says similar deals in Turkey, Asia and Italy are imminent.

Nimbuzz’ web chat feature is fully integrated into the existing StudiVZ interface allowing IM conversations between all community members. The full mobile Nimbuzz portfolio including voice calls, chat, file sharing across popular IM communities will also be made available later.

The partnership is effectively a revenue sharing agreement with income generated from ads sold as part of StudiVZ’s own advertising opportunities.

Nimbuzz has raised over $25 million in three rounds, mostly from Luxembourg-based Mangrove Capital Partners. The company claims it is growing at 10,000 registrations per day, with a 25% active user base in over 200 countries.

(Image credit: Mobile Industry Review)

Word has reached me that Netherlands-based Nimbuzz, the mobile VoIP and IM startup that extends into social networks, has raised $15 million in a second round led by Naspers/MIH, with Nimbuzz’s other major existing investor Mangrove Capital Partners also participating. It’s already had $10 million from Mangrove (the original Skype investor). Apparently deals with 10 major social networks and three operators are already on the table. The latter see these kinds of apps as a way of boosting data use and therefore revenues. The cash will be used to extend to Windows Mobile, iPhone and Android. They are looking at a million registered mobile users so far.

Nimbuzz offers free mobile VoIP, conference calling, IM and group chat and photo and file sending across multiple IM communities, including Skype, MSN, Google Talk, Yahoo!, AIM, Jabber and ICQ, plus 23 social networks, including apps/widgets for Facebook and Myspace.

Read the rest of the entry.

Nimbuzz is a Java-based program you load to your handset that allows you to initiate instant message conversations with others via Windows Live, bypassing your phone’s built-in IM client. But what’s great is that it also has built-in support for the network’s Voice features, meaning you can make voice calls to other Windows Live users (mobile or not), or even to other phones, using the way-low prices Windows Live affords you.

This means that any data-connected cell running Java has a fairly decent chance of running this specialized version of VoiP, bypassing the cellular voice network altogether. It’s tricky, and we haven’t seen it in action yet, but it’s definitely a fantastic idea and something worth trying.

Nimbuzz Talk Goes Live! [Mobile Crunch]

Mobile-to-mobile calls placed between Nimbuzz users are billed at local rates, making for some cheap or even free international calls. Nimbuzz’s presence support allows users to place calls by selecting a contact off their buddy list. The service then connects users via an 800 number. MobileCrunch’s Oliver Starr says the mobile-to-mobile quality is “excellent”, but mobile-to-pc “leaves something to be be desired”.

The new service also has a “Buzz” feature that lets an offline contact know you’re trying to get in touch. In their next release, this will cause Nimbuzz to wake up on the contact’s phone.

The service is a product of Buzzaa Media Group, in Rijswijk, The Netherlands. The company recently received funding from Mangrove Capital Partners, a group that provided initial funding for Skype. Check out Oliver’s post for far more details and analysis.