In a Thursday announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Skype revealed that it has acquired Qik - a videoconferencing firm that specializes in the capture and management of video chats.

The Qik technology essentially enables the users to host two-way live video calls on an array of smartphones, along with allowing the users to record as well as share video via e-mail, SMS, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and a horde of other platforms. In 2010, the userbase of Qik stood at 5 million.

Though the financial terms of Skype's Qik acquisition deal remained undisclosed, Business Insider - which first leaked the acquisition news on Thursday morning - said that, according to the details shared by an unnamed `inside' source, the deal cost Skype nearly $100 million.

Confirming the Qik acquisition on a company blog post, Skype's chief executive Tony Bates said: "I'm happy to announce that we've entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Qik."

Praising Qik for being "incredibly good at capturing moments," Bates added in the blog post that Qik is "a compliment to what we do."

With estimates indicating that video accounted for almost 40 percent of all minutes spent on Skype last year, the acquisition will result in Qik's technology eventually becoming a part of a growing video call branch for Skype.