by Hudson Barton, guest blogger

The two most noticeable long-term sub-trends or anomalies in Skype growth, as measured by "concurrent users" are:

1. Underperformance of Asian usage in comparison to American and European usage.

2. Outperformance of weekend usage in comparison to weekday usage.

The first anomaly may be already correcting itself. Asian growth is fairly strong this year so far. Notwithstanding the nearly two weeks during the Chinese New Year celebrations when Skype usage in the Pacific Rim dropped almost out of sight, growth of Asia's "real users" in 2008 has been unexpectedly strong, reversing the trend of the prior 3 years. "Real users" is a measurement that marks both actual Skype users and their average time logged into Skype. It is too early to tell for sure whether the trend will continue but this has to be welcome news for Skype; proof that registrations of new Skype names eventually turns into real customers.

The second anomaly is not correcting itself. Here we are essentially looking at the usage of Skype in America and Europe and comparing growth rates during the midday when we expect weekday usage to be weighted far more heavily toward businesses than weekend usage when we expect Skype users will be logged in for mainly personal and recreational purposes. What we see very plainly is that Skype is growing more rapidly as a general communications tool than as a specifically business communications tool. There could be several reason for this, and the measurement technique is not precise enough to know what the truth is:

• One guess is simply that the general market for VOIP is growing faster than the business market.

• Another possibility is that Skype is doing well in both general and business markets, but better in general markets.

• Lastly, it is possible (but not likely) that Skype is actually doing poorly in business markets, and that other VOIP carriers are having more success.

Observations about Skype growth from the perspective of "real users" are made regularly on The Borderless Communicator blog.