Smart Communications now offers Skype’s Qik app to its subscribers, allowing them to instantly create and share seamlessly short spontaneous video messages to their friends using their mobile phones.
Available on Android and iOS apps, Skype Qik is a mobile messenger app that quickly captures moments in video as they happen and shares or swaps them with friends through one-touch recording and instant sharing. It can be accessed from Smart on all data-enabled devices across all network platforms – from 2G to 3G to 4G speeds – in the country.
As part of the company’s “Internet for All” initiative, all Smart subscribers can create and send or swap video messages to anyone using Skype Qik for free for three months from its launch.
The Skype Qik app is easy to use. When a user has downloaded the app from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store and registered his number, he now chooses a recipient from his list of contacts, creates or records a video, and sends it. A user can also send group messages to many recipients.
The video messages will remain in both sender’s and recipient’s mobile phones for two weeks. When the said period lapsed, the video will automatically disappears. Users can delete the video as and when desired, removing the video from everyone’s phones.
In case a user has no time to respond to a video message, Skype Qik comes pre-loaded with Qik Fliks, which is a personal video equivalent of an emoji icon. Or he can pre-record and store 12 short videos so he can share them quickly.
“From simple SMS messaging to mobile chat apps, the way Filipinos communicate has evolved over the years. Video has become part of the vocabulary of mobile phone users, so video messaging is just the next logical step in this evolution. Smart, in partnership with Skype Qik, paves the way toward a new way of communicating through video messaging,” said Charles A. Lim, EVP and Wireless Consumer Division Head at Smart.
“We see a growing demand for differentiated services from mobile operators across the world. Our partnership with Smart will give users in the Philippines the possibility to tap into the global Skype Qik community and experience a new way to capture and share moments on a variety of mobile platforms,” said Judd Harcombe, Head of Global Market Development at Skype.
