Skype, the Internet calling service owned by eBay, is expected to announce the application for the iPhone next week at the CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas, according to tech blogger Om Malik of GigaOM.

(List of participants: Apple) Skype keeps mum on the announcement and declined to comment on rumors. However, the company holds a press conference on Tuesday afternoon in Las Vegas the day before the show kicked off. And it’s likely news will be announced there.

Skype acknowledged earlier this year that he was working on the application for the iPhone. Scott Durchslag, company Chief Operating Officer, said at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January that the iPhone version of the client will be coming in the Apple Store in App.

“We must ensure that quality is, and the application works very well, before we can announce the program on any device,” he said in an interview after the company in a press conference. “But we have something for the iPhone, as soon as it’s great .

Skype sees the mobile as the next big growth area for their business. He not only expect more than 405 million registered Skype users to take their experience, which provides free and low-cost appeal to them first, but the company also believes that they can reach new users via mobile devices. Putting peer-service that uses the Internet for voice traffic, mobile phone, it becomes very easy to use. Regular service Skype running on your computer and requires no special phone or headset and microphone to make calls and receive phone calls.

In the U.S., most mobile phone plans include domestic long distance calls as part of sets of minutes, so that the Skype service is not that attractive. But for customers, calling for the U.S., the price may be $ 2 a minute, if the mobile phone user does not subscribe to a special monthly plan for international calls. This makes the Skype mobile client of the most attractive for users who want to make cheap international calls, but do not want to be connected to their computers.

Versions of the software Skype, already exists for Windows Mobile phones. Nokia also plans to introduce some of its Skype phones to customers. And Skype works in a company called iSkoot develop special Skype phone, which is sold via mobile phone operator Hutchison 3 UK Skype-Lite version of the client is also available on some Java phones.

Now iPhone users will have to use Skype, too. But before iPhone users get too excited, it is probably a big catch. The new Skype application for the iPhone, perhaps, be restricted to Wi-Fi networks, just as Apple has done with other third-party services like Fring, which offers access to Skype.

If so, it would be a huge limitation of the usefulness of the service. While other mobile phone users can use the Skype service wherever you cell phone ringing iPhone users will be limited to only using it where they can access Wi-Fi. Most Wi-Fi access at home or in the office, where they may be near a computer anyway.