Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry are all solid, capable mobile platforms on their own. What makes one better than another depends on how you use it, and what you use it with. The ecosystem you prefer has a significant impact on the mobile device you choose.

All of the devices can play with other tools and services to some extent. But, Android smartphones are natively woven into the Google ecosystem by default. If you use Gmail, Google Apps, and other Google services for most of your communications and productivity, an Android smartphone just seems like a natural extension of that ecosystem. It just works.

The same can be said of the Apple ecosystem. Someone who has a Mac, and an iPad, and used iCloud has a vested interest in choosing an iPhone. Photos are magically streamed between all the devices. Documents are synced. Browser tabs open on one device can be viewed from another. Reminders and Notes are automatically synced. It’s a beautiful thing.

Businesses and individuals who live in a Windows world have a reason to go with a Windows Phone smartphone. The integration with SkyDrive, Microsoft Office productivity tools, and the rest of the Microsoft culture provide a more intuitive, consistent experience.

Unfortunately for BlackBerry, it doesn’t have the same sort of broad ecosystem to fall back on. It’s a nice mobile OS on a solid device, and it can be connected to the tools and services provided by the other ecosystems. It just lacks the native integration that make Android, iOS, and Windows Phone more appealing for businesses or individuals who are already invested in an Android, iOS, or Windows culture.

The ecosystem alone won’t make or break a mobile device. But, choosing a mobile platform that fits best with the tools and services you use everywhere else just makes life easier.

Tony Cripps, principal analyst at Ovum believes that Skype fills one of the obvious application gaps on Microsoft’s smartphone platform, but that this first beta represents a baby step on the path to a larger vision.

“At least in its initial guise, Skype for Windows Phone offers a fairly typical Skype experience on smartphones running as a standalone application. We expect this to change in future iterations with Skype becoming a more pervasive part of the Windows Phone software platform and experience, with its functionality integrated tightly with applications and services across the phone increasing its utility.

“Moreover, this is an important step in Microsoft’s strategy to make Skype a ubiquitous – and unavoidable – part of its product portfolio, integrated wherever it makes sense to do so. A pervasive Skype has much greater potential to disrupt existing models of communication than one that is dependent on users proactively choosing to install it.

“In this capacity it could begin to act as a social “glue” helping to drive usage of the service and furthering sales of Skype-enabled Microsoft products considerably in future. It could eventually help blur the lines between business users and consumers with Skype increasingly seen as simply a convenient tool to communication available anywhere.”