Over on SMS Text News a guest blogger who only goes by the name Terry has written a piece discussing whether the Skypephone will be taken up by mainstream users, or ‘normobs’ (normal mobile users). ‘Terry’ works in the mobile industry and has an “influential marketing position” which prevents him from speaking about such things on record, but unofficially he has plenty of interesting thoughts to contribute.

In an entertaining narrative involving early morning tubes, Polish armpits and tinny hip-hop, Terry describes some teenagers he overhears discussing the 3 Skypephone as ‘early adopters’. After addressing the point where normal people start discussing new devices in marketing terms, Terry goes on to talk about the importance of Skype, declaring it “is a technology that people really need, free phone calls straight from a computer”, reporting how even his dad uses it despite not being the most technologically savvy of people.

Terry then analyses why the man in the street hasn’t yet gone crazy for Skype; firstly it’s because though Skype itself is free, phones are not and to get the free aspect, users must buy the handset and top up, or buy a contract. His second point is that he believes the Skype application will instill fear in to the hearts of normal men, those who are used to just using their phone book and text messages. However, we should point out that on the Skypephone the phone book and Skype contact list are integrated with one another you can simply access your contacts from the standard phone book.

Time is the answer, thinks Terry, plus “cheap data and the ease of use of a rock”. These things will enable the masses to embrace mobile Skype, Terry suggests that perhaps he’ll even receive a Skype mobile call from his dad one day.