VoIP firm Skype today announced further details on last month’s news that it will provide a client for smartphones which run on Symbian, the world’s dominant smartphone operating system. Nokia is the first handset vendor to support the client, stating that it is now downloadable for free from its Ovi Store. The world’s largest device manufacturer said it will run on any Nokia smartphone using Symbian ^1, the latest version of the Symbian platform. “Symbian enables us to bring smartphones to more and more people and ensures scale for our solutions and compelling services, such as Skype,” said Jo Harlow, senior VP for smartphones at Nokia. “We’re seeing around 1.5 million downloads a day on Ovi Store now and believe that the Skype client for Nokia smartphones will have wide appeal to Symbian users.” In a statement from Nokia, it was noted that Skype plans to soon introduce the client to Symbian mobile devices from other manufacturers, including Sony Ericsson.

Last week Skype announced it is pulling Skype for Windows Mobile phones and Skype Lite for Java handsets, including Android. The download pages for Windows Mobile and Java have been removed from Skype’s site, although existing users will not lose functionality for either Skype for Windows Mobile or Skype Lite. “Neither of these apps offered a great Skype experience,” Skype said in a blog post. However the VoIP firm is on a strong mission to curry favour with the mobile community elsewhere. At last month’s GSMA Mobile World Congress it announced a partnership with Verizon Wireless, the largest US operator, and has provided its client to other operating systems such as Apple’s iPhone OS. Skype’s VoIP client has previously been embedded on smartphones from Nokia as well as 3’s Skypephone.