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In the sunny landscape of pure over-the-top services, providers like Skype do not have to play vendor politics, but instead rely on their direct brand appeal to consumers. But on mobile networks, as Google certainly knows, there is a big gulf between the ideals of fully open access, and the need to please the firms that own the biggest brands and channels to market - the carriers and handset makers. Skype is having to strike that awkward balance, and in the US, has downgraded its recent, and important, expanded deal with Nokia's Ovi Store, to focus on its other new best friend, Verizon Wireless.

We can only imagine the political manoeuvrings that have gone into this decision, but Skype has announced that it will not promote its new alliance with Ovi Store in the US, but will devote its marketing to the agreement it announced last month, with Verizon. The Ovi deal, which expanded on previous tie-ups with Nokia, was seen as a huge breakthrough for the internet telephony vendor, because it gets Skype preloaded onto large numbers of Nokia handsets and accessible from all its web-enabled phones. But despite the impact of such a major channel in the non-US world, in north America Nokia has limited presence, so Verizon will be a more powerful friend.

Ovi Store has gained a position in the US at last, since it is supported by AT&T and T-Mobile, but neither cellco carries a wide range of Nokia phones at this stage (though that is likely to change at AT&T, getting closer to the Finnish giant to fight back against Verizon's Android strategy). So Skype has made its choice and will not seek a listing in the US Ovi Store.

"Skype has made a decision in the United States not to promote the Skype for Symbian app through the Ovi Store," Skype told VentureBeat. "We did this so that we could drive more attention to the recently announced Skype and Verizon Wireless agreement. This was a marketing decision, plain and simple. Skype users in the US can still download Symbian by going directly to Skype.com."

Verizon is to launch a customized Skype application for smartphones later this month. When announced at the Mobile World Congress show, the partners would not say the agreement was exclusive, but Verizon's CMO John Stratton did say customer "won't see an application like this anywhere else in the US".

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