eBay Q4 2007 - Skype raises calling activity estimates 50%
eBay published its quarterly results. I therefore updated my personal tables to prepare some posts later on.
However, I noticed something weird in the Skype-to-Skype minutes...
The data in the red ellipse comes from the presentation of Quarter 3 2007 results.
The data below the red ellipse, comes from the current presentation published Wednesday.
I looked several times to both tables, and they have the same legend. However eBay upgraded the number of minutes served by a very significant amount, Quarter 3, 2007 raising from 6.1 to 9.8 billion minutes served; this is a correction of the original data of more than 50%.
The slide says "Skype-to-Skype minutes are estimated; prior period amounts are updated to conform to current estimation methodology."
Did they make a mistake and did they correct it? Did they improve their measuring algorithm, and did they do a backward calculation?
[Editor: What is that estimation methodology? Can we get updated figures going back to when they were first published?]
Comments
how do they come up with lower number of minutes but positive percentage growth? the number make no sense. this is what is known as 'creative accounting'
Posted by: tom | January 28, 2008 01:23 PM
The paradigm of "minutes" is well understood to be merely for comparison with the telephone business that Skype tries to replace. But Skype has several non-voice operations such as IM, video, SMS, file transfer, and "send money"... plus a fast growing set of services that rely upon integration of these core communication features. So let's ask the analysts to spare us from simplistic statistics about only the voice segment.
Posted by: Aaytch | January 29, 2008 08:35 PM
@Tom: the percentages are correct, they are Year to Year, the minutes are Quarter by Quarter.
@Aaytch: the numbers are NOT from "simplistic analysts", but from "creative accountants" at Skype! ;-)
Posted by: Jean Mercier | January 30, 2008 11:24 AM