Skype for Business: Interop2009 video

Stefan Öberg spoke at Interop 2009 last month, as Jim Courtney reported and Öberg blogged.

Two key takeaways.

First, Skype plans to formalize and extend its premium (prioritized queue, private resources) online customer support for enterprises and to deliver local language, in-country customer support through channel partners.

Last, Stefan said survey results show Skype is making its way into US and UK workplaces.

The slides go by very fast, so here are screenshots on from the Stefan Öberg's Skype for Business presentation at Interop 2009 flickr set. The comments below are mine.

hmmm. "The future of business communications" is a pretty big scope.

Not much new about the consumerization of IT. Been going on for generations. Mobile phones were smuggled in. Wi-Fi, Macs, even PCs were first brought to work by employees. Here's a 2005 Gartner release saying "Consumerization Will Be Most Significant Trend Affecting IT During Next 10 Years."

Tough times call for desperate measures. Even "consumer grade" tools will do if they save lots of money.

We do have lots of connectivity, for now. Good enough for Skype video calls.

Not just by IT employees but by everyone. Darned employees, using strange software and connectivity in ways we didn't plan.

 

We have one life, and we spend it at home, at school, and working. Our tools are becoming closer to us, less tied to or provided by our employers.

Presence will be matter when people stop lying about their availability. Skype's presence service only lets you set one presence message for everyone. Yet you might be available to your best customer and not available for Bob from the accounting department.

More stats... 

Oh, and Skype Lite is coming out for the Blackberry this month.

Harder questions: What percent of smartphone users in the UK and US have ever downloaded an application? What percentage of smartphones sold in the US and UK will come with Skype preloaded?

Less integrated than bolted on or sitting next to your existing workflow. With a few limited exceptions, you cannot build Skype into an enterprise application. Unless you consider Outlook an enterprise workflow app.

Of the nine applications shown above, five were made by Skype, and three were made by one Skype developer. Not exactly a robust ecosystem. 

The "tools" talking points are real accomplishments, although far from complete. Skype offers a version specifically for easy configuration (networking options and feature crippling) by IT. The readable admin guide to Skype has been useful in explaining how to make Skype installations conform to company security policies and assert control over users. Skype's business control panel is a first stab at letting companies manage user accounts and distribute account funds.

"Enhanced service" as used here means customer service and technical support. Interoperability, well, Skype's not there yet but it's nice to hear executives acknowledge it as an opportunity.

The closing slides say Skype is good wherever you work (office, travelling, at home).

Critique: A friend in the audience told me it was too salesy for the Interop IT crowd. Everyone there knew Skype already and they generally appreciate live demos more than PowerPoint. I tend to agree. The best parts of the talk were the hard numbers and the real world stories of companies putting Skype to work. Using real company names and showing photos or video of people using the tools at work would have been more meaningful.

See also:

• Voice On The Web: Skype’s Stefan Öberg @ Interop: Stealthing Skype Into Business, But Cover the Entire Skype Ecosystem
• Gartner: Consumerization: The IT Civil War.
• Ars Technica: Analysis: IT consumerization and the future of work(2008). "'IT consumerization' is one of the more unwieldy buzzwords to come down the pike in some time, which is a shame, because there's definitely something to it. Here's a look at three factors that contribute to the IT consumerization trend, and at what this trend may mean for the future of how we work."

tags: skype, interop, interop2009, interop09, vegas, lasvegas, skypeforbusiness, business, enterprise, stats, statistics, trends, consumerization

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
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Skype's 2009q1 showed IPO-worthy growth and profits

CORRECTION: Skype's year-over-year revenue growth is 38% after correcting for foreign exchange. We reported 28%. 

eBay announced quarterly reports today. Skype did well. Activity continues to go up, revenue goes up, people keep joining at a faster rate.

Skype's Freemium Rate (the blue line below) holds steady, showing people are still willing to pay to talk, finding value in Skype's paid services.

26.5 billion minutes called last quarter. 23.6 billion minutes free Skype-to-Skype, 2.9 billion minutes Skype-to-PSTN. 1 in 8 people paid for Skype calling (Freemium Rate: 8.1).

Revenues continue to rise at a rate about the same as new users trying Skype.  

Revenue: $153.2 million

• $613 million/year run rate
• 21% year-over-year growth in dollars, 38% yoy foreign exchange neutral
• $143 million from transactions, $10 million from marketing and other revenue
• 80% from international (non-USA) sources

37.9 million new accounts

• 416,484 new accounts per day
• 443.2 million accounts (cumulative)

Skype reports non-mobile users connected to the Skype cloud (Skype dialtone) throughout the day. On weekdays, this number is now ranging between 16-17 million at peak and 9-10 million. It rolls as different time zones come online. This puts the number of active users at between 100 and 150 million by Skype Journal estimates.

The growth in online users has been growing in a straight line for years. There's a summer slow-down for seasonality, but Skype could be at a weekday peak of 18 million simultaneous by 2009 year-end.

Skype is on page 16 of eBay's slides below.

eBay 2009q1 Earnings Slides

View more presentations from evanwolf.

tags: skype, ebay, financials, 2009q1, stats, statistics, trends

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
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Skype's market value over time

By Jean Mercier, Skype Numerologist and regular contributor to Skype Journal.

Wandering over the Internet I found several comments on the value of Skype, for instance here and here.

Interesting to see an analyst predicted a revenue of $786 million (for 2010? I guess this was a typo, and they meant 2009) while I predicted $750 million for 2009 in a private chat with some Skype fanatics some days ago.

Well, lets wait to refine the predictions: eBay will divulge their results Wednesday for the first quarter of 2009!

[EDITED] Added on the graph the weighted average of the Skype Journal Poll based on 68 votes.

tags: skype, statistics, trends, marketcap, value, valuation, ipo, analysts, ebay

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
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Skype Journal investor relations events (22,29 April), forum, etherpad

1. Coming events:
   • eBay's Q1 2009 Earnings Call
     April 22, 2009
   • 2009 Annual Meeting of Stockholders
     April 29, 2009
2. Join our Skype Journal Investor Forum to track the news and dissect the financial statements. This is a Skype chat.
3. Let's etherpad the 22 April earnings call. I thought we'd try collaborative note taking with EtherPad, a realtime wiki page. Our etherpad (free, browser based) lets us see everyone typing on a single page at the same time. Creative commons. Kinda fun.

tags: skype, ebay, investor, skypejournal, 10Q

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
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1 in 10 iPhone users downloaded iSkype

Skype crossed the two million download mark in a week. Apple's sold roughly 20 million iPhones. So 1 in 10 iPhone users downloaded Skype. A happy way to start the quarter.

Meanwhile, just for context, Apple is counting up to its one billionth download. So Skype's all-time share is 1 in 500. In the US it's already down to #3 among free downloads, behind #1 Awesome Ball and #2 iFighter (congrats on one million downloads!).

Note: Skype isn't including iPhone or other mobile application store downloads in its realtime stats feed. I'm sure they'll be add in for financial statements, but the Skype.com download statistics are no longer complete.

tags: skype, iphone, iskype, apple, mobile, downloads, statistics

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
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Skype averages 150k concurrent voice/video calls

Skype reported 20 billion minutes of Skype-to-Skype and Skype-to-PSTN calling in 2008-Q4. With 131k minutes in a quarter, that means Skype averages 152,625 active person-minutes at any given time.

The 20 billion figure counts two people in a one minute Skype call as two minutes.

I'm assuming this included minutes from mobile callers.

Skype dial tone: 17 million simultaneous online

Guest post by Jean Mercier, the Skype Numerologist

Again a million milestone of concurrent users online today: 17 million at 17h34 GMT (my clock in the screenshot is GMT+1)!!! This is the fifth time since September 2008! This is quite remarkable, because, as mentioned before in this blog, it is also the first time we add more than 5 millions in a September – June period.

Exciting times ahead! And a pity that Skype doesn’t tell us from which countries the growth comes from, although they unveiled a little bit of the picture some weeks ago. They gave much more detailed information in the past, before they were eBay! See for instance this blog post from April 2005: Whose net is it anyway?. First hand information from the CEO himself!

tags: skype, statistics, stats, trends, simultaneous, online, concurrent, dialtone, charts

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

As phones becomes PCs, shouldn't you control your phone, not the phone company?

Skype will announce results of their Zogby consumer survey tomorrow. Findings support Skype's bargaining position with mobile carriers (pre-install Skype, embed SILK) and their freedom-to-connect regulatory rhetoric (delamination, Skype Carterfone).

UPDATE: announced.

The issue: Do you want the control and power over your mobile phone you have over your PC?

People under 30 years old think of phones as PCs. They want the same choice over software, connectivity, and services they have with PCs.

US carriers block a phone's features and restrict which programs users put on their phones, a "walled garden" approach. Skype clearly wants people free to choose Skype software and hardware. 

Consumers in countries where they have more control over their mobiles, like Spain and Japan, get the idea that smartphones are like PCs, platforms for software. 

The timing is great: just two weeks until more Skype announcements at CTIA Wireless 2009 in Las Vegas. CTIAw is a tradeshow where mobile carriers and those who sell to/through them gather. Mobile phone manufacturers, transmission technology companies, software companies (the whole stack) will be there.

Mobile carrier execs decried consumer control at the September 2008 CTIA event.

In this survey, 1800 US consumers were asked:

Recently, an upper-level executive from a mobile carrier said that consumers would rather have their mobile devices' applications chosen for them than to have the ability to choose the applications for themselves. Do you agree or disagree with that statement?

4 out of 5 want the ability to choose for themselves:

Strongly agree	1.8%
Somewhat agree	10.6%
Somewhat disagree	25.2%
Strongly disagree	55.3%
Not sure	7.1%

Nick says the study shows users want the kind of application choice iPhone users find in their app store.

tags: skype, zogby, survey, statistics, stats, demography, users, customers, mobile, usa, us, jp, japan, es, spain, uk

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Skype's news release:

Worldwide, consumers still perceive wide gap between their computers and mobile devices; want greater control over mobile experience

Zogby survey of U.S., Japan, Spain and U.K. mobile users shows most do not currently download applications to mobile devices; Skype calls for greater collaboration between carriers, software providers and device makers to assist consumers in embracing next generation of mobile experience

LUXEMBOURG, March 17, 2009 - Skype published data today from a recent Zogby survey showing that most mobile users still perceive a gap between the purpose and controllability of their computers versus their mobile devices. This gap correlates with the finding that the vast majority of mobile users do not yet download applications to their mobile devices.

However, the same people expressed a strong desire to be able to choose mobile applications for themselves, and not have their carriers decide what applications they can use. The results also indicated that people will pay more for a device that will allow them to control the applications.

The study surveyed approximately 3,000 mobile users in four markets -- the U.S., U.K., Japan and Spain - between December 2008 and February 2009. Highlights of the findings include:

• 62% do not yet view their mobile device as an extension of their computer.
• Only 23% feel that they have more or the same level of control over their mobile device as they have over their computer.
• 70% have never downloaded an application to their mobile device.
• 67% want to be able to choose their mobile applications for themselves, rather than have their carriers choose for them.

Regional Breakout: Spain Leads the Way

When the results are broken out by market, regional differences emerge. In Japan, the U.S. and the U.K., respondents felt the least control over their mobile devices versus personal computers (67 percent, 78 percent, 65 percent, respectively), which correlates to few users downloading applications to their mobile devices (22% in Japan, 26% in the U.S., and 28% in the U.K.)

The results from Spain, however, paint a different picture, one that hints at what happens when mobile consumers are given more control. In that market, more than half of the respondents felt there was no difference or they had more control over their mobile devices (53%) as they have over their computers (46%). Nearly half (47%) view their mobile devices as extensions of their computers. Given these attitudes, it is perhaps not coincidental that nearly half of Spanish mobile users (48%) have downloaded applications to their devices, a much larger percentage than the other markets surveyed. And, a much larger percentage of Spain’s mobile users – 50% -- are willing to pay more for a mobile device that allows them to control their applications.

The Age Gap: Younger People Less Likely to View Mobile Devices as Merely Phones

The survey results also indicate that younger adults have a different view of what a mobile device is than their older counterparts. When asked if they view their mobile device as a phone to make calls on, a computer to access the Internet and download applications, or both, younger respondents were less likely to consider their mobile device to be just a phone. For example, in Japan, respondents under 30 were more likely to view mobile devices as a computer, or both (50%) than view them as merely phones (47%), while only 1 in 4 respondents in that market between the ages of 50 and 64 shared a similar view.

“These results show that work could be done to continue to blur the line between the computer and the mobile device, and that advances in new Internet-based services and mobile devices will help drive innovation. Overall, people want the ability to have control over which applications they download and this is consistent with trends in other industries,” said Chad Bohnert, VP Marketing and E-Commerce at Zogby International.

“This is a clear call to action for all of us in the communications industry – carriers, device manufacturers, and software companies like Skype – to work together to deliver what the mobile consumer, especially the next generation of device and data plan buyers, obviously want and expect,” said Scott Durchslag, Chief Operating Officer of Skype. “Together, we can bring a rich PC-like communications experience to mobile devices – one that combines voice, video, presence, instant messaging, and file sharing. In doing so, consumers win, and so does the industry as it fuels growth in data minutes and revenues.”

To answer mobile consumer demand, Skype is focused on delivering more choice, value, and functionality to the billions of mobile devices in the market today. In recent months, Skype now offers mobile applications for a wide range of operating systems, including Android, Windows Mobile, and Java-enabled phones, and is now available on more than 100 devices from LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson. In addition, the 3Skypephone, available from Hutchison Whampoa's wireless subsidiary 3, has been used to make more than 300 million Skype-to-Skype calls.

UPDATE: Added "People v. Walled Garden" graphic by Phil Wolff

142 hour marathon Skype call

142:54:50, to be precise. Just shy of six days (144 hours).

Richard and Kelly from the Netherlands kept a Skype voice call running for 143 hours from Wednesday, February 04, 2009, until 10:00AM Tuesday, February 10, 2009.  Richard sent a picture file to Kelly during the call. A system error cut the call. Richard used Skype 4.0 BETA and Kelly used Skype 3.X on Windows.

Why? "Well... to see if its possible, and we are trying now to break this record to a new record ;)"

Richard said "during the conversations we had no problem, other then after a file transfer the line went bad, so we muted the thing for one second and then it worked. We didn't think it would be a world record, but we think its great!!!"

This is a day longer than the previous record by Monty from Palmdale, California.

See also:

• Marathon Skype voice call: 66 hours 40 minutes. October 2008.
• 115 hours in a Skype call. November 2008.

tags: skype, marathon, 143, call, statistics, record

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Skype 4.0 Gold – Why Pave the Newbie Journey?

Software is always too hard. Skype's advantage five years' ago was it just worked. That's no longer enough. Skype serves pioneers and early adopters just fine, but now Skype is mainstream and needs to be easier, simpler, more streamlined in turning prospects into loyal users.

4's user experience revamp shows much of that thinking.

Skype needs Scale

Skype is actively driving for scale. Despite being the world's largest VoIM network, they feel small. With more people using Skype (new record set yesterday), Skype can earn three benefits.

• Social Graph Lock-In. When everyone you know has a Skype name, you need a good reason to leave the Skype network. When all your contacts are organized nicely and you'd have to recreate those relationships elsewhere, you're going to stay.
• Becoming a default communication channel. Do you reach for your phone when you want to talk to someone? Or do you reach for Skype? Once you have that kind of mind share, the cost of getting and keeping customers goes down and rates of use go up.
• Better people discovery. Think white page and yellow page directories. Less important for close friends and family, more important for finding useful strangers and friends-of-friends. 

Why do you rob banks? Because that's where you keep the money.

Where do hundreds of people talk to each other?

• Online. Voice over Instant Messaging (VoIM providers like Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, AOL, Tencent and many others) and social networks (like facebook).
• Mobile Telcos. Serving billions.
• Landline Telcos. Serving billions. 

While it's great that up to 16 million people are logged in at the same time, thousands of millions of people have mobile or landline dialtone.

So Skype is still small.

And needs to get more customers, keep them, and help them become active.

Skype is bringing in people from many sources. But Skype loses people to just three: death, defection to a competitor, or abandonment of Skype-like activity. What can Skype do about defection and abandonment?

Optimizing User Experience for Heightened Experiences

While Skype doesn't use this language, they've applied industrial engineering ideas like the Theory of Constraints to improving design. The TOC says to look at your factory, discover the biggest throughput bottleneck, unplug it, see how throughput changes, then start over with the new biggest bottleneck.

Skype applied this to the newbie journey, finding points of pain and abandonment (and improving them), and moments of joy and satisfaction (and enhancing them).

For every thousand people who hear of Skype, only a fraction look for it, download it, try it, and have delightful experiences that keep them hooked on Skype.

Skype's improvements should translate into higher download rates, more new account registrations, more contacts per address book, more first voice calls, more first video calls, more IM chats (a surprising number of people don't know Skype has instant messaging features), longer calls, more time logged in (Skype dialtone), and stronger word of mouth.

Next up, the newly paved experience.

Technorati tags: skype, design, strategy, ui, ue, ux, theoryofconstraints, toc

16 million simultaneous online

By Jean Mercier, Skype Numerologist, of Belgium.

The fastest million ever.

It is the second time in 3 months that I have to use the same blog post title. Indeed, it took only 21 days or three weeks to add another million.

I made a very wrong prediction in September last year and believe it or not, I am very happy that I was wrong!

This is the first time ever that Skype crosses four times a million milestone in a Northern hemisphere “fall-winter-spring” period, or "School Year"! And, this ten months period is only half way, therefore we could see at least one more million, or perhaps even two! Exciting!

16,159,211 is today's reported peak.

Editor: See also: Jason Harris crediting this to London's snow storm and people working from home. Thanks to Julien Decot, Chaim Haas, and Neil Lindsey for progress reports from San Francisco, New York, and Vancouver.

 

See Skype Journal's alert last Monday (27 January 2009) as we approached 16 million.

Technorati tags: skype, trends, stats, statistics, million, millions, census, population, users, usage, simultaneous, concurrent, online, dialtone

Skype Usage Soars to 16 Million, Due to UK Snow?

Skype, as of the time I'm writing this post, has 16,097,842 users concurrently logged in. That's a historic number any means.

Could this spike in usage today be attributed in any way to the snowstorm the UK is experiencing?



This post is written by Jason Harris, an internet telephony writer and enthusiast. To follow him further, read his blog.

Last quarter 2008 results

By Jean Mercier, Skype Numerologist and regular Skype Journal contributor

Skype revenue growth is flattening. It increased only by 1.2% in $US, and about 3.7% in Euros. In the eBay slides they say “On an fx neutral basis Skype revenue accelerated 5 pts” (fx neutral means “foreign currency neutral basis”). Considering the economic crisis, this isn’t too bad.

I am however surprised about the weak revenue increase, because SkypeOut minutes rose by 18%. And SkypeOut minutes means revenue. If most people were still calling (like I do) on a “per minute” cost, revenue should have risen proportionally. Therefore, this probably means that most people call through a fixed price “calling plan.” Could it be that, from an economical point of view, this is a "too low" margin product?

More spectacular is the growth of the Skype to Skype minutes: this rose by 28%. The economic crisis could have helped to obtain this, because this is completely free, including webcam calling!

One could, however, expect some revenue increase from Skype certified products (headphones, webcams, etc.). Personally I think this is a dying revenue stream because, certified or not, most webcams and headphones and other devices work with Skype! Why should a manufacturer therefore transfer part of its income to Skype?

User accounts continue to show a quite linear growth. I would have expected a stronger growth last quarter, for the same “economy crisis” reason.

Revenue per user account (or should I say username?) shows a decaying tendency. But, as I said in the past, this is a very misleading metric, because it includes all usernames created from the beginning, including “dead” accounts and multiple accounts of one user. Pity that Skype doesn’t publish the number of active accounts!

Next quarter could be better, because I see a quite spectacular increase of concurrent users online, and this will for sure influence indirectly the revenue stream.

Almost 16 million simultaneous Skype users on Monday

15,996,686 is the highest number of logged in Skype users. Ever. 3314 short of the 16 million mark. It was reported about 10:58AM Pacific time, Monday, 26 January 2009. Skype hit the 15.5 million mark 12 January. Just for those who drink a shot of millimallikas every time Skype reaches another million.

Hat tip to Jim Courtney for turning in the top number.

tags: skype, stats, statistics, trends, census, users, million, millions, 16, 15996686, dialtone

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2008q3: Skype activity spikes, revenue growth slows

eBay Inc. (Public, NASDAQ:EBAY)  reported Skype's financials today. eBay CEO Donohoe was pleased with Skype's management and Skype's performance but still didn't see synergies with the rest of the eBay portfolio.

2008Q4 revenue was $145 million, up 26% from the year before, and a run rate of roughly $600 million annually. Revenue growth is substantial but flattening out.

Skype pulled in 35 million new users in Q4, an enthusiasm not seen since the same quarter in 2006.

While Skype has 405 million user accounts on the books,  we don't know how many are active. We look to Skype calling and Skype dial-tone for clues.

The Skype community spent 23 billion minutes voice and video calling. Skype-to-Skype minutes: 20.5 billion in Q4, up from 16 billion in Q3. SkypeOut minutes grew 200 million in Q4, from 2.2 to 2.6 billion minutes. That's 44 person-years per quarter.

You can't make or answer Skype calls without your Skype "dial tone" (your Skype client is turned on and you're logged in). Skype estimates the number of people connected to the Skype cloud. One statistic, Daily Peak Simultaneous Online, flirted with 16 million this week, a new high. We'll let you know when Skype crosses that line.

See also:

• Douglas A. McIntyre: "Skype added 35 million new users during the quarter and ended the period with more than 405 million registered users. Since most Skype customers use the service for free, all those extra people represent more cost than revenue opportunity."
• Doug Caverly: "Donahoe, who hasn't quite completed his first year on the job, might consider making some drastic changes unless he wants eBay's shareholders to start eyeballing him the same way Yahoo's investors looked at Jerry Yang."
• Eric Savitz: "After hours eBay shares are down 75 cents, or 5.7%, to $12.53."
• Anthony Ha: "Growth in these divisions [PayPal, Skype] can’t make up for the big decline in the marketplaces, and eBay lowered its predictions for the first quarter of 2009 to between $1.80 and $2.05 billion."
• Elise Ackerman: "Donahoe said he is "confident that the synergies between Skype and other parts of our portfolio are minimal," and that he is pleased with Skype's momentum. "It is not a distraction," he said."

tags: skype, ebay, donahoe, earnings, revenue, minutes, stats, statistics, trends, data, sales, 2008, Q4, financials, financial, growth

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15.5 million

by Jean Mercier, Skype Numerologist

Usually i am the first or second to blog about it. Today, two other fanatic Skypers warned me that I should blog. I was aware, but too busy. 15 million concurrent users online today, congratulations Skype and its users!

So, what is exceptional about this? Not that million added of course, not the 84 days it took to reach the 15 million, but it could be that we add another million before the end of June. In that case it will be the first time in Skype history that we cross 4 times a million milestone in one Northern Hemisphere “school year.”

Anyway, Skype shows a quite strong growth the last months!

Skype Surpasses 15 Million Concurrent Users!

While on Skype this morning, I noticed something I think is astonishing! 15+ million simultaneous online users!

This is a huge feat that the Skype team should be very proud of.

An a related note: Skype just launched Skype 2.8 for Mac and some versions for Android as well.

Update: Looks like Skype just posted about this as well.

This is a guest post written by Jason Harris, an internet telephony writer and enthusiast. To follow him further, read his blog.

Phil Wolff's 26 incriminating 2009 Skype Predictions

Last year's Jim Courtney's 2008 predictions and mine. 
In 2009:

1. MacWorld sucks without Steve Jobs.
2. Steve Jobs steps down as Apple CEO.
3. Skype brings back Skypecasts with a new feature: with one click, introduce spammers, con artists, and sexy webcam girls to each other.
4. Skype for Neocortex. Mood based on serotonin levels. Very high quality audio and video by tapping directly into the optic nerve and auditory system. Some side effects.
5. Skype for Lovers. Extension of Skype 4.1. Just one buddy to dial. No interruptions. Ultrasimple UI: click the heart.
6. Skype's new platforms have more active developers than BT Ribbit. More than Google Android. Fewer than Apple iPhone.
7. Litigation. 1530 sleep deprived patients sue Skype for keeping them up late.
8. Google Central will be exciting.
9. Google Video Talk adds multiparty video.
10. The Emerging Communications Conference (eComm) will sell out.
11. Yahoo! fires thousands of people. Decimates the messenger team. Hires a new executive team. Reorganizes. Again.
12. Skype introduces multiparty video. The kids love it. WebEx hates it.
13. Skype for Asterisk gets video call support. Dating sites love it.
14. Skype for WoW builds on Skype for Asterisk. The raiders love it. 
15. Skypephone comes to the Americas via partnership with with US mobile carriers. Wal-Mart will carry it. Nothing for Canada.
16. 3 INQ1 sales will cut into 3 Skypephone sales in the UK.
17. U.S. Mobile Carterfone rules (to free mobile phones from carrier contracts) will be considered by the FCC.
18. VoIP falls from telecom jargon. Even VoIP bloggers stop using the term. The public starts using Skype as a generic name for internet talk.
19. eBay's auction businesses will do well in tough times, better in the second half of the year.
20. Skype will make $630 million in FY2009.
21. Peak Skype usage will top 18 million simultaneous users.
22. Skype will serve 23 billion minutes in 2009Q4.
23. Skype scores product placements in:
    
    
    • Hannah Montana: The Movie, spurring the rise of Skype pajama parties.
    • The Sinatra Club, using the new Skypeoke feature.
    • Star Trek, as ancient technology.
    • Startups will rally to Running Out Of Angels (March 2009).
    • 24 as Cisco cuts ad spending.
    • In My Pocket (2009) is not about mobiles.
24. Skype issues new krypto since its old cryptographic source code escaped from TOM-Skype control
25. Skype Video for Mobile. Skype buys a streaming video service for smart mobile camera phones.
26. China approves SkypeIn and SkypeOut.

tags: skype, predictions, 2009, inq1, skypephone, wal-mart, canada, asterisk, video, ebay, voip, carterfone, WoW, 24, china, tom-skype

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How Skype Will Grow in 2009

Guest Post by Hudson Barton, The Borderless Communicator

2008 is turning out to be a great year for Skype growth (real users), nearly matching the record year of 2006. In my view, the patterns of Skype growth are affected by:

1. The popularity (name recognition) of the software itself... in comparison to communications alternatives.
2. The capability of computers and mobile communication devices.
3. The quality and capability of the software for multi-modal communication... in comparison to communications alternatives.
4. The state of the world economy
5. The availability of broadband

So for 2009 here is how things are shaping up.

• Skype has no discernible marketing program. It never has. Skype relies almost entirely upon word-of-mouth. If Skype were to introduce a marketing program, the opportunity for growth could be significant. There seems to be zero prospect for such a marketing plan.
  
• The power of computers will grow marginally. The capability of mobile devices, especially smartphones, will grow hugely. The latter is a real opportunity for Skype if it can develop quality software for the most popular platforms such as the iPhone, BlackBerry and Nokia N- and E-series. On the other hand, if the world economy sinks, then few people will be buying those new computers and mobile devices. Overall, this is not going to affect 2009 growth significantly.
  
• The overall quality and capability of Skype client software will improve marginally. Aside from bringing out client software for mobile platforms, upcoming improvements in the client (especially video and audio) will affect Skype growth only on the margins.
  
• Because Skype/Skype calling is free, and both SkypeIn and SkypeOut are very inexpensive, it is reasonable to assume that a poor economy is good for Skype in terms of its market share of communications. However, the overall market for communications may well decline in a bad economy. So while a declining economy is not good for Skype, it is less bad than for Skype's competitors.
  
• The availability of broadband is a very important factor in the growth of Skype's "real users".

Summary: Skype growth (as measured by "real users") will continue on its current trajectory (averaging around 830,000 new "real users" per month). That is a huge number by anyone's standard. As in prior years, growth will be strong in the first quarter, slack in the second and third quarters, and strong in the fourth quarter.

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Skype download rate suddenly triples

Guest post by Jean Mercier, Skype Numerologist

Since the first week of November, Skype shows an increased download speed. Previously it fluctuated around 500 downloads per minute. Now: 1400 downloads per minute. Almost triple speed since November 5!

I looked at my other data to see if there are other signs, but they are quite contradictory:

• Concurrent users online shows a very strong growth, and we could even reach 15 million very soon.
• Number of purchase orders doesn't seem to have an increased growth pattern.
• There is since September a downward trend in Skype.com website visits.

I didn’t notice any special Skype "event" that could explain this increase in downloads and active users.

What other reasons could explain the growth?

The economical crisis could be one motivation for people to use the "free calls" from Skype.

Perhaps the "Obama Election campaign" is another explanation of the phenomenon: indeed some "Obama teams" used Skype. See the Skype blogs: US Elections: Skype gets out the vote.

tags: skype, trends, downloads, stats, statistics, chart, growth, november, 2008

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Brand Value: Skype, iPhone, Google

I took a look at The Brand Bubble's BrandAsset Valuator (BAV), "the world's largest database of brand perceptions." Market research data visualization from Young & Rubicam Group.

This valuator compares four attributes: brand strength through differentiation and relevance, brand stature through esteem and knowledge.

Here's how they define the terms:

• D. Energized Differentiation. A brand's unique meaning, with motion and direction. Relates to margins and cultural currency.
• R. Relevance. How important the brand is to you. Relates to consideration and trial.
• E. Esteem. How you regard the brand. Relates to perceptions of quality and loyalty.
• K. Knowledge. An intimate understanding of the brand. Relates to awareness and consumer experience.

So I compared three global brands we know and love: Skype, the Apple iPhone, and Google.

You can see they each score well on Energized Differentiation. There's nothing else like Skype, iPhone, or Google.

Skype and iPhone are both much less relevant to the average consumer than Google. Google is well understood and used by many more people.

Esteem and Knowledge both show a similar pattern: the brands with more experience and time have more stature in the minds of consumers. 

The BAV compares strength to stature in the next chart. You want to be in the upper-right quadrant with Google and eBay.

Skype is moderate strength, low stature. So while Skype is defining its unique value proposition well, people don't feel they know or respect it. That will come with education, hands on, and time.

What three things should consumers learn about Skype in 2009? What can Skype do with its product strategy to move from the upper left to the upper right?

tags: skype, branding, brand, marketing, esteem, knowledge, relevance

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Getting Closer to the True Numbers on Skype via Mobile

Yesterday UK web publication TelecomTV put out a post "Skype claims mobiles are involved in a quarter of its calls". But a "correction" comment by the author, Tony Chan, disclaims his basic premise:

CORRECTION: As the original author of this story for CommsDay, I am corrected by Skype that the 4 billion minute figure is actually for Skype-to-Skype minutes with video, NOT mobile.

Turns out to be a confirmation of what we have heard in the past: 25% to 30% of all Skype-to-Skype calls invoke video calling.

So how can one generate Skype-to-Skype minutes from a mobile device? What % of Skype-to-Skype minutes are generated from a mobile device?

• iSkoot: sets up a Skype session on their server using information delivered from the iSkoot client on a supported mobile device, such as BlackBerry or Nokia N-Series. When you make a Skype call, it's Skype-to-Skype from the iSkoot server to your called Skype contact.
  
• Skypephone: uses iSkoot's algorithm with the one difference. 3 has set up their own "iSkoot" servers to support this service. As of October 1, 3 customers using iSkoot or a Skypephone can now make SkypeOut calls from any 3 Skype-enabled phone also.
  
• Skype for Windows Mobile: here the limitation is the small, and decreasing, market share for Windows Mobile devices. It requires either a WiFi connection or 3G but the former is favored but both call quality and robustness reasons. But you can make both Skype-to-Skype and SkypeOut calls from this client. (And it's the only instance of a true Skype VoIP client on mobile device -- challenging both processor speeds and battery life.)
  
• Skype for Mobile - currently at a beta stage with limited outbound calling; this service fundamentally uses the same architecture as iSkoot. (I suspect iSkoot has any appropriate intellectual property protected under this. After all, Skype and iSkoot are working together on Skypephone, etc. But it is interesting to experience the difference in user interfaces between iSkoot and Skype for Mobile) Again this does not put the full VoIP client on the device but rather back at a server. Probably not too many minutes here yet.
• Update: Mobivox CEO Peter Diedrich emailed to remind me that their voice-enabled service also has the ability to launch Skype-to-Skype voice calls. From any landline or mobile handset worldwide the caller makes a "local" call to VoxGirl who, in turn, launches and connects to a Skype session on a Mobivox server. Effectively creating a landline- or mobile-to-Skype call, Mobivox requires no downloads or client software. VoxGirl will determine presence information to decide whether to proceed with a call; however, there is no IM/chat capability.
  
• I have described my experience with Fring for iPhone when it launched almost two months ago. My problem with any iPhone application of this nature is that there is currently no background processing such that you can allow an IM session to run in background while executing other applications.
  

And how successful has 3's Skypephone service been? We initially heard some qualitative information at eComm 2008 last spring. But, information supplied by Skype's PR this morning provides us the basis for an order-of-magnitude guestimate:

".... since Skype launched the 3 Skypephone in November last year, there have been over over 100 million minutes of Skype-to-Skype calls by users of the 3 Skypephone and other mobile handsets with Skype and there are currently more than a million minutes of Skype-to-Skype calls each day on 3 mobiles in the UK."

So out of 16 billion Skype-to-Skype minutes each quarter (as reported in the last eBay quarterly analyst call), it would appear that, at the current > 1 million minutes/day on 3, 75 to 100 million minutes per quarter are via mobile handsets. Hmmm, that makes about 0.5% to 0.8% of all Skype-to-Skype minutes.

Why can 3 offer this service at such low prices? As explained by iSkoot CEO Mark Jacobstein at eComm 2008 last March, there are no termination charges for Skype-to-Skype calls, even when one Skype session is on an iSkoot server.

P.S. - Want to keep up-to-date on these issues? Registration for eComm 2009 (Mar 3 to 5) opens a week Monday.

Full disclosure: the author uses iSkoot on a BlackBerry Bold when out of the office; he has also experienced successful use on a Nokia N95.

Tags: Skype, iSkoot, Skypephone, Skype Mobile, eComm2008, Mark Jacobstein, Tags: TelecommTV, Tony Chan

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Source of Skype Growth

Borderless Communicator Hudson Barton has spent the last few years as the "keeper of the 'real users' statistic", a measure of Skype usage that attempts to understand the demographics of Skype's user base and put it into some sort of perspective so that it can be compared with other communication services.

There are only five public statistics provided by Skype in their reporting. First is the number of users online in the lower right corner of the Skype client. With each eBay quarterly report we get to see gross revenue generated by Skype, the cumulative number of Skype accounts opened as well as minutes of Skype-to-Skype calls and minutes of SkypeOut calls.

I have posted a couple of times about the fallacy of the cumulative number of Skype accounts as it gives no indication of "active" Skype usage over, say, the last quarter or, expressed more succinctly, how many accounts were really used for a Skype call of any type in the previous quarter? It's based on stale data; this particular number ranks right up there with "how many hamburgers sold".

However, by tracking the number of users online several times per day over the past few years, Hudson feels he has gained some perspective on Skype's growth.

Sources of Skype Growth
by Hudson Barton

A question was raised the other day, in a Skype public chat forum, that the raw "real user" statistic could not adequately answer. That question was "Is Skype growth coming from new users or from changes in the pattern of Skype use?" So here is a deeper analysis that answers what the raw "real users" statistic fails to fully capture.

In 2005 and 2006, the amplitude of the daily usage wave was growing. That is to say, the daily highs were growing relative to the lows (after discounting regional distortions)... 10% per annum faster in fact. Skype usage was increasing in the middle of the workday relative to off-peak hours. People were not using Skype as a general communication utility for inbound and outbound calling and presence. Rather, they appear to have been using Skype for special work-related purposes like outbound long distance calling to save money.



In 2007 and 2008, the trend reversed. The amplitude of the daily usage wave started shrinking. The lows have been growing relative to the highs ... 20% per annum faster. It appears that people began using Skype for normal, essential and basic communication, staying online for longer stretches of time or even around the clock in order to receive inbound calls and to mark their presence. Although we don't know the precise motivation for this change in behavior, it could be related to the expanding availability of unmetered broadband. Electricity is the only variable cost associated with keeping your Skype device running 24/7. So the trend is mostly due to a broadening of American and European usage.... folks in industrialized countries are staying in the Skype cloud around the clock with either computers, mobile devices or proxies such as iSkoot.

Today, the peak of the Skype usage wave is at about 14.5 million and the trough is about 7.2 million (out of 36 million total "real users"). The comparable graph for a "phone" company (or a VOIP operator like Vonage) would show a usage wave with an amplitude of zero; all users are by definition online all the time. If Skype's usage trends continue, it will begin to look more and more like an indispensable communications utility and less like a mere disruption to the communications status quo.

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Tencent's QQ: 45 Million Simultaneous Online

Tencent Holdings (SEHK 700), one of Skype's biggest competitors, had a great quarter. From their 2008Q3 financial release (pdf):

• 856.2 million: Total registered Instant Messaging (“IM”) user accounts, 4.1% growth QoQ [quarter over quarter]
• 355.1 million: Active IM user accounts, +3.9% QoQ
• 45.3 million: Peak simultaneous online user accounts for IM services recorded, +7.9% QoQ
  
• 4.4 million: Peak simultaneous online user accounts of QQ Game portal (for mini casual games only), +11.2% QoQ
• 30.3 million: Internet paying subscriptions, +16.1% QoQ
• 14.8 million: Mobile paying subscriptions, +10.4% QoQ

More people actively use QQ instant messaging than live in the United States and Canada [Tencent defines "active" as logging in to an account in the last 30 days of the quarter].

QQ IM has 3 simultaneous users online for every Skype user online.

Skype has 370 million user accounts, does not report active users but estimates vary from 36 to 85 million people, and peak simultaneous is around 14.5 million.

Skype report minutes, when Tencent does not. Live voice and video calls. Ten billion minutes served in June 2005 (before eBay bought them). 100 billion minutes served as of February 2008. 18 billion minutes a quarter as of 2008-Q3.

Mini-SWOT

QQ has a few strengths.

• No QQ-In or QQ-Out. Regulations forbid connecting to the public telephone network. So Tencent focused their resources to create online communities, content, and games that both trigger talk and make money. QQ commerce is so hot QQ has one of the world's largest virtual currencies.
• Multiple OS clients. Windows. Windows Mobile. Mac beta. Browser. Linux. 
• Age and Incumbency. QQ celebrates their 10th year of service. Skype is only five years' old. Brand awareness and loyalty build with time and experience. QQ has effectively built IM dial-tone (confidence that people will be available through the network) and network lock-in for its customers.
• Monolingual, Monolithic. QQ only needs to support Chinese. So it's easier for people to find other people with similar interests. Spoken Chinese languages pose a linguistic barrier, but not too much since Mandarin is a common second language. 

Weaknesses.

• Sub-Global reach. Skype has to build markets in each country, in every language community. This makes it harder to localize software and web sites, provide customer service and tech support, and talk with a community; the time and costs pose a barrier to entry. Once localized, Skype has an advantage over entrants. QQ isn't even trying to serve non-Chinese cultures.
• No PSTN or mobile voice integration. No income. No new points for the company to learn.
• Platform 1.0. Like most IM providers, QQ offers a simple messaging API. A handful of third-party clients offer alternatives to QQ's own clients. However Tencent lacks a platform strategy, building foundations for third-party partnerships beyond IM clients.

Opportunities.

• Markets: India. Chinese Diaspora.
• Features: Voice/Video/Conferencing.
• Business: Alliances with Indian and western portal/IM companies

Threats.

• TOM-Skype joint venture. Working inside China to spread Skype's brand.
• Premium quality audio and video, a qualitatively different experience.
• The four national Chinese telcos who may enter the market and who restrict PSTN access.

tags: skype, im, voim, tencent, qq, china

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Skype's Freemium Rate (free/fee) is flat

Local fluctuations are less interesting than the range.

I applied several curve fits to Skype's freemium ratio but nothing reliable came of it. I don't imagine it is predictive of anything, merely descriptive. 

The wobbliness[1] of Skype's freemium ratio is, obviously, a function of variations in the supporting data. Eyeballing it, free activity leads fee by a few months. This makes sense if free experiences are preparatory behavior to greater commitment.

At a larger chart scale, like 1-100, the world of percentages, the curve would look amazingly flat. Many freemium businesses would interpret a ratio in Skype's 7-8 range as golden.

tags: skype, metrics, stats, statistics, free, freemium

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[1] I did love Professor Magaddino's econometrics classes, but wobbly suggests so much more than the proper language of statistics.

Measuring Freemium with Minutes is easier than with Money

Hudson asked me about using minutes instead of dollars and the trend of the Freemium Rate I described Monday.

Comparing apples to apples, minutes-talked is the only data I have on both sides of the free/fee equation.

Money as a measure is useful. It leads us to the lifetime value of a customer. How can we measure free in dollars?

We might value the free minutes at some averaged rate and compare that to Skype's overall revenue.

Skype earns money from licensing its brand, the rental of SkypeIn phone numbers, from its online store, ads in Skype’s yellow page directory services. Sadly, I don’t have access to revenue data broken out by source.

We might include costs with dollars, seeking profitability or net value of customers. Costs for fee-based services are higher (transaction costs, higher security, admin, sales costs, customer service, technical support, business development) than for free. 

Meanwhile, we have customer behavior in the form of minutes. And the simple freemium rate comparing free to fee. It will suffice.

tags: skype, freemium, metrics, business, strategy, free, skypeout, directory, yp, yellowpages, skypein, revenue, costs

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Skype and the Freemium Rate (free/fee)

So here’s a little chart for you. Billions of Skype minutes served (left axis). Light blue bars are free Skype-to-Skype minutes. Dark blue bars (at the bottom) are SkypeOut minutes, paid for.

The curvy line at the top is the ratio between the free and fee. It has been hovering between 7 and 8.5 (right axis) for years. I’m calling it the freemium rate.

This is astonishing for being low (a good thing) and for its constancy. Other companies are lucky to get one-in-twenty or one in one hundred.  

Skype’s project to make user experiences more convenient should boost all talk activity. Skype for Windows 4 is smoothing the customer journey from first download to routine calling.

tags: skype, trends, charts, statistics, stats, freemium, business models, conversion, rates, behavior, revenue, minutes, billions

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14 million online - The fastest million ever

Skype Numerologist Jean Mercier writes: "We needed only 35 days to go from 13 million concurrent users online to 14 million."

17h55 GMT

New Skype Accounts Drive Calling Growth

 

The blue line (top left) is quarterly account creation.

The red line (bottom left) shows what people do with accounts. 

Skype's language from today's 2008 Q3 eBay Investor Conference Call.

"Skype surpassed 13 million concurrent users at certain peak times."

13 million – congratulations Skype!, Skype Journal, 15 September 2008.

"Skype-to-Skype minutes reached nearly 16 billion, a 63% increase year over year."

A new record.

From the Form 8-K filed Oct 15, 2008

"Skype continued its robust growth trajectory,
reporting $143 million in revenue for the quarter,
representing 46% year over year growth."

$572 million per year run rate. With about 500 employees. 

"Skype added 32 million registered users in the quarter,
ending the period with more than 370 million registered users around the world."

Skype added 25-35 million new users every quarter for two years. This quarter is not exceptional.

Skype doesn't report account abandonment, so we have no direct measure of user churn. 

"In addition to growing its user base, Skype is focused on product strategies to enhance customer engagement."

Fall-Winter-Summer growth

Jean Mercier is the Skype Numerologist and a regular contributor to Skype Journal.

As usual after a Northern Hemisphere Summer, the growth of Skype users is again visible. Not that there is no growth in summer but

• less people are working,
• more people switch their computers off while they are in the garden, or
• they are traveling and have less access to Internet.

Therefore, fewer users are online at the same time.

Those summers are very visible on the "million milestones" graph that I published last week. In all the past years, excluding the first year, the dots representing the "million milestones" are quite close to each other (see the brown left braces), except when there is a July-August period in the middle (see the red "summer" arrows).

So, what for 2008-2009? I would guess that Skype will as usual add two more "million dots' to its graph before July 2009 (see the Sky(pe) Blue extrapolated dots), going well over the 15 million people online. And I predict also that Skype will reach 16 million concurrent users somewhere around September 2009. But it is only a guess :-)

About growth speed

Each time that I pretend that the growth of Skype isn’t exponential, but linear or even slowing down, fellow blogger Hudson Barton tries to refute it. See his comment on my last post for instance (yes, aaytch, is Hudson himself)!

Perhaps I was a bit too fast and too rude to answer (I apologize for this), because indeed the last 12 months were much better, than the previous 12 months. But anyway, let me analyze the table above, to explain why I still feel I am right. The table shows the top or record concurrent users online at several dates in the past.

The third column is the mean daily (rounded) number of additional concurrent users online at “peak time” for a certain time span. For instance:

• The last two weeks (before September 22), the mean increase was 35000 additional concurrent users online.
• The last year it was 9800 additional concurrent users online.
• And so on.

How do we predict the future? Based on the last two weeks (+35000)? Or on the last 6 months (only +5300!), or on the last year? We can’t predict the future of course, we only can make guesses.

Choosing periods smaller than a year is often wrong for predicting long term growth. Changes in speed in smaller periods can however teach us something about temporary effects (the success of the launch of new Skype features, or the seasonal “Northern Hemisphere summer” effect).

For the long term past growth, we the see that the 2007-2008 season (+9800 users/per day) was very much better than the previous season (+6500). Does this mean that the growth is much faster? Is Hudson right? Could be, but in my opinion, the season 2006-2007 (+6500) was a very bad one compared with the two previous ones (+8300 and +10000), and last year (+9800) was just catching up again.

Only the future will tell, and some signs are very promising: Asterisk, Client version 4.0, Skype for iPhone, perhaps even multiparty videoconferencing, …

tags: skype, trends, stats, statistics, seasonality

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TOM-Skype Breach: Does TOM-Skype bring users?

So, why Skype doesn't just walk away from a partnership?

Results matter.

86 thousand new people have signed up daily for two years.

You have to do what's right, but the temptation to stay and the cost of leaving is strong.

Source material...  

In the 2006 Annual Report:

At the end of January 2007, there were over 31.5 million registered TOM-Skype users, up from over 9.0 million at the end of February 2006, an increase of over 22.5 million new registered users.

In the 2007 Annual Report:

At the end of February 2008, TOM-Skype registered users were close to 63 million, up from about 31 million and 51 million at the end of December 2006 and July 2007, respectively.

In the news release titled "TOM Online Reports Second Quarter 2007 Results":

At the end of June 2007, we have over 42.0 mn TOM-Skype registered users up from over 35.5 mn at the end
of March 2007.

So, moving things one day for the convenience of starting on the first of a month:

Date	TOM-Skype Accounts (millions)		Source
3/1/2006	9.0		ANNUAL REPORT 2006
1/1/2007	31.0	71k	ANNUAL REPORT 2007
2/1/2007	31.5	16k	ANNUAL REPORT 2006
4/1/2007	35.5	67k	TOM Online Q2-2007
7/1/2007	42.0	71k	TOM Online Q2-2007
8/1/2007	51.0	290k	ANNUAL REPORT 2007
3/1/2008	63.0	56k	ANNUAL REPORT 2007

tags: skype, trends, accounts, statistics, china, tom-skype, tom, chart

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One billion Skype downloads served today

Jean Mercier is the Skype Numerologist and a regular contributor to Skype Journal.

Today is the birthday of my oldest son, 22 years. But also today, at about 9h17 GMT, Skype reached the phenomenal number of 1 billion downloads.

Congratulations Stefan and congratulations Skype !!!

Some comments about this number:

• This means about 2.8 downloads for each registered username
• The current mean download speed is about 500 downloads/minute
• In the past there were short periods where the mean download speed was much higher than 1500 / minute
• The last two years the speed of downloads was mainly linear (see the light blue straight line)
• A download doesn't necessarily mean a "new user", as "old users" also download Skype on "new or other computers" and when Skype releases "new client versions"
• And last but not least, Skype belongs to the top ten most downloaded applications ever.

[EDITED] Hehe, Skype was also very aware of the 1 billion, because Josh Silverman blogged on it also some minutes after reaching that milestone, but I think I was first: I posted at 9h26 GMT, and he posted on 9h35 GMT! ;-)

[Editor: About 6.7 billion people live on Earth, 1.46 billion use the Internet. — Internet World Stats]

tags: skype, trends, statistics, downloads, metrics, stats, performance, measurement

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997667891 Skype downloads

Counting down to one thousand million served. Just a few more days.

tags: skype, downloads, stats, statistics, trends, performance

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13 million – congratulations Skype!

Jean Mercier writes the Skype Numerology blog

So another million mark was reached on 15 September 2008: 13 million concurrent Skype users online.

After a very strong start in 2008, where two million-marks were reached in a very short time span, we had to wait 210 days for the next million. [Skype reached 12 million online on 20 February 2008.] This was the third longest period we had to wait for a million mark. This also means there is still a good and steady growth of Skype users, and it also means most of them are satisfied with the services offered.

But the growth isn't exponential anymore. The graph seems to show a small downward bending tendency.

I hope some innovations will cheer us up in the near future: a genuine Skype client for the iPhone for instance!

And perhaps another side comment: until right now, almost nobody blogged about these 13 million. It therefore seems to be a no-event!

tags: skype, trends, statistics, stats

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