Skype, announced that it has acquired Qik, a social mobile video app that lets you capture and instantly share video from anywhere. We use Qik to live stream our Social Media Strategies conference.

Sources told me that the price in the $100 – $150 million range.

According to the company blog, Qik it started 2010 with 600,000 users and ended with 5 million. The huge growth resulted from its partnerships with Sprint, T-Mobile, Nokia, and Samsung. Although this is small in terms of user for Skype, the catch is Qik comes preloaded on something like 200 mobile phones running Android, iOS, Symbian, BlackBerry OS and Windows Mobile. The acquisition enables Skype to assume those deployments and leverage its brand very quickly.

Qik investors include Salesforce.com CEO Mark Benioff, George Garrick, and Arjun Gupta.