Internet Calling to Spread to Apps

These numbers show a dramatic uptick from a similar survey Pew conducted in 2007, when only 8 percent of respondents had made calls online and 2 percent did so on any given day.

"It's part of a longer term process where people are moving away from land line telephones to cell phones or Internet phones," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, to the WTOP radio station.

The technology suggests that voice calls will increasingly flow through computing devices, both fixed and mobile, where they can be linked to social networking and other types of communications people routinely carry out on smartphones and PCs.

Although more people probably think of Skype as a desktop app to put it more exactly than something to install on a smartphone, Microsoft may find it moreover important for its Windows Phone platform, which doesn't have an integrated VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) option. That will be increasingly sought afterwards, especially as better 4G connectivity makes both voice and video calls more practical.

The uptick in usage that Pew reports

It's even possible that increased awareness of VoIP on smartphones is feeding into the uptick in usage that Pew reports.