Yahoo VP of Mobile David Katz revealed the company's plans to Reuters yesterday, explaining that the yet-to-be-approved app would be free, work over Wi-Fi and carrier networks, and support video calls via Yahoo Messenger from mobile to mobile or mobile to PC.
If Katz's statements prove to be true, Yahoo's mobile video calling technology will be more feature-rich and have a much larger reach than Apple's. FaceTime works between iPhone 4 users only and limits support to calls over Wi-Fi to maintain video call quality.
Of course, Apple has complete control over whether Yahoo's iPhone version of the video calling application sees the light of day. The Cupertino, California-based company has already let two challengers offering similar functionality into the store -- Fring and Tango -- so we don't anticipate there being too much red tape.
What's more interesting is that Yahoo seems to be positioning its 81-million-member-strong Messenger client as a VoIP video challenger to Skype. If Yahoo can introduce an application that supports high-quality video calls (which won't be an easy feat) between mobile devices and PCs, it will certainly have a distinct advantage over Skype for now.