SightSpeed's Berkeley, California headquarters

Skype earned their way to two Dell gaming laptops in May 2006, the XPS M2010 and the XPS M1210. Back when this was all novel, Skype had an inside track. And now small and nimble SightSpeed secured a bigger presence with the world's largest PC company. Congrats, SightSpeed!

Why did Skype lose and SightSpeed win?

Speculating:

Since Then...

• Relationship turnover. The normal musical chairs of both Dell and Skype personnel.

• Stale memories. Evidence from 2006 may not have been persuasive in 2008.

• Unmemorable results. The earlier test was stacked against Skype: customers had to opt-in. Would having Skype on a US laptop in 2006 have improved sales?

And Now...

• SightSpeed skinned well. When Dell calls, you jump. Could Skype have offered Dell a "powered by" client in Spring 2008? A Dell version of Skype's web site? No.

• More video now. SightSpeed offers multi-party video conferencing; Skype offers more telecom, audio conferencing, quality depending on conditions outside Skype's/Dell's control. In which did Dell want to co-brand?

• Customer Primacy. SightSpeed gave Dell the primary customer relationship. If Dell swaps out to another video supplier, would SightSpeed be more likely than Skype to help Dell transition customers to the new provider?

• Revenue Sharing. Money doesn't always change hands in these types of deals, but it's not been done. Skype could offer a piece of its service subscription pie. Dell would have more power in a relationship with tiny SightSpeed and might extract/extort more cash with better auditability.

Five things Skype can do beyond normal business practices:

1. Tune the desktop client for skinning.
   
   Skype customized for partners before. TOM Online to serve the Chinese market and comply with PRC censorship laws, and MySpace IM with Skype to add identity and voice interoperability. In both cases, engineering costs were non-trivial and ongoing.
   
   4b (the Skype for Windows 4 Beta) will help. It's UI framework is made to be easily reconfigured and tweaked by Skype developers.
   
   Companies like Dell will value the ability to tailor user experiences across each of their demographics. They design PC packages to fit user task profiles - which activities people spend the most time on, what is most important - for office collaboration, team gameplay, family ties, hypersocial tweens, hardened security devices. Skype must make it fast and easy for partners like Dell to reshape Skype for each product family.

2. Open the client UI. Race to see how fast you can open the UI to independent developers, for skinning and plug-in applications. When you get it right, you'll

3. Multiparty Video. Keeping up with the SightSpeeds. And Apples.

4. Continuity of Scale. Adding the Nth person to a conference should seamlessly move the call to a platform better able to support that conference. It could be a member of the conference with more capacity or better bandwidth. It could be a conferencing service like Vapps' HighDef or Skype's Skypecasts. Remove the friction.

5. Serve a web client. Talk is not just for your buddy list anymore. It's for friends in Dell forums, Dell support, Dell blogs, Dell investor relations, Dell government affairs. Offer the world's Dells a platform they can use, not just sell.