I thought it was interesting in light of the ongoing battle for perceived ownership of the end user. Many operators, Verizon included, are running their own app stores, which they want to be the main point of contact for the customer when customising their handset. Nokia is making some enemies here by running its own app store – Ovi.

Yes, I’m guessing here, that Verizon had a word with Skype and told it to pull the app from Ovi, which really highlights how weak Nokia’s foothold is in the US market. In Europe it would be a different story. But we’ll probably never find out if that was the case.

Here’s what Skype said to me: “Skype has made a decision in the United States to not promote the Skype for Symbian app through the Ovi Store. 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.”

Are you trying to say that this is protect Verizon’s Skype deal by making it harder for non Verizon subscribers to get Skype?

Are you trying to say Verizon doesn’t want their own users to install Skype via Ovi?

As you use the word “presumably”, my guess it you haven’t done much research.