Motorola and Skype today announced a new partnership to help the companies advance their mobile VoIP solutions. The new partnership is set to develop connectivity options and access for Skype users on Motorola devices.

The first part of that partnership is a co-marketing collaboration initiative that will define certain Motorola companion products as "Skype Ready." Those companion products are expected to include a variety of Bluetooth devices, as well as enable Skype Internet Telephony of certain Motorola devices.

Motorola and Skype said that they expect the first Skype Ready products to be ready in the first half of this year.

"By making Voice over IP truly mobile and easily accessible, we can make communications seamless for consumers as they travel throughout the environments of their day -- at work, at home, in the car or out in the world," said Liz Altman, vice president of business development, Motorola Mobile Devices, in a statement.

"With over 68 million downloads of their client in the last 18 months, we believe Skype is a natural fit with our vision of simple and seamless connectivity for our consumer customers around the globe."

Skype launched its VoIP telephony service in August 2003 as a blend of traditional instant messaging features and voice technology. Calls between Skype users are free, while a paid add-on exists for calls to traditional PSTN land lines. Today's announcement is not the first mobile move by Skype.

In September, Skype launched a PDA version of its service for Pocket PC users.