After the Math lesson by Zuckerberg today, the expected video calling addition to Facebook chat with Skype got me thinking about Windows Phone. Having played with Mango for a few hours, the Facebook chat integration is pretty solid. The ability to switch between SMS and chat is seamless and useful.
Windows Phone Mango is rumored to introduce video calling, the front facing camera in the emulator and Nokia N9 suggest so. As I wrote earlier, bringing Skype & Facebook chat to WP7 gives Microsoft leverage with the carriers (who aren’t being nice to WP7). Microsoft has its own infrastructure to power video calling but we haven’t seen much happening for the consumer segment. (It’s primarily enterprise stuff.)
This brings me to video calling on WP7. Facebook chat is already a part of Mango and Microsoft can bring this to WP7 without having to invest resources to developing their own implementation. For Microsoft, Skype & Facebook’s growth are important, they’ve invested in both. Skype being a part of WP7 gives them the multi-platform presence & Facebook integration gives them the no-Skype-client required freedom!
With Windows 8, video calling integration has been spotted and speculation has it that it might be powered by Skype since the Windows team was on board with the Skype purchase. Deep integration with Facebook and Windows 8 (HTML5) and a no-client video calling feature across platforms is in place for Microsoft.