We knew this one would end in tears.

It turns that out Orange and O2 are furious with Nokia for the Skype pairing.

So here’s the jist, if you don’t already know. Nokia planned to pre-load Skype, the  provider that lets customers make free calls, onto their flagship n97 handset.

Citing “operator sources”, the networks may end up refusing to stock the devices if Nokia doesn’t strip the application. Oh the drama!

And get this, the operators are apparently venting their anger at high level executive meetings with Nokia, whom they believe are trying to wrestle away their control by offering an app that could potentially hurt call revenues.

This all comes down to a battle of wills between Nokia and the operators about who “owns” the customer. Considering the amount of money Nokia spend on trying to do that each year, around £40 million, I would guess they want to own all of them.

More than anything it’s Nokia building a system around the brand and at the same time gambling on the fact that they won’t loose any of their call revenues in the process. It’s a dangerous game.

This can go two ways:

1 - Nokia will be forced to remove pre-loaded Skype from their handsets.

2 - Orange and O2 will refuse to stock Nokia devices.

This has a lot left to play out.

Filed under: N97 News, handset news, industry news