Today during a Q&A session Nokia revealed the N97 wouldn't be pre-loaded with Skype. Which was news to me. Though no reason was given as to why.

An obvious guess would be a battle with the networks. Whether the networks not wanting to lose money through customers using Skype over their network minutes or whether Three wanted to keep Skype exclusive to their network. Three is currently the only UK network that bundles Skype with it's handsets and also the only network that allows Skype calls over their network.

I own an E71 on Three, for Skype and Skype alone. It's invaluable