Skype buying Qik mobile video service for $100 million

UPDATE: The deal is officially announced by Skype's CEO Tony Bates (see the announcement video below), but the price tag went up by $50 million for a cool $150 million.

Reports are pointing towards the acquisition of the popular Qik mobile video sharing service by the even more popular Skype for $100 million. The acquisition certainly makes sense for Skype, as it would give it access to some best in class know-how about video conversations on mobile devices, so it may start wasting less bandwidth during video calls over 3G than it does now.

Qik currently has over 5 million users, ten times more than it had about a year ago, thanks to deals with Sprint, T-Mobile, Nokia and Samsung to come preloaded on their devices. Its growth was spurred especially after Apple announced its FaceTime video chat service, as a viable alternative on Android and Nokia phones. Skype and Qik share one and the same venture capital investor - Andreesen Horowitz, which recently raised $650 million to invest in mobile startups, so this might receive a green light pretty soon, bringing uneasy sleep for carriers' CEOs.

source: Moconews