Skype a Coming of Age Story

SEYPE A COMING OF AGE STORY Like all of us, it began as a mere twinkle in the eye of its creators. In less than 10 years, it had matured into a beautiful adult. Skype has certainly made its Swedish, Danish, and Estonian parents proud, with its latest life accomplishment being the netting of a cool $8.5 billion from Microsoft for the privilege of utilizing it. But Skype wasn't always that lovable and convenient communication tool that we all know and love. In fact, it wasn't until his older brother Kazaa went to prison that he came to exist in the first place. SKYPE IS BORN Kazaa* owners Niklas Zennstrom & Janus Friis celebrate the birth of Skype, a free VOIP (Voice Over IP) program developed using the same peer-to-peer concept as Kazaa. • Kazaa - P2P file sharing program that was the most downloaded software in history. 2003 Origin of the Name: SKY PEER-TO-PEER (Too Long) SKYPER (Domain Name Taken) SKYPE (Bingo!) 2004 GROWING UP As broadband takes off, Skype begins to blossom into a fine young program, raising nearly $20M to help fuel growth. Freemium Model: Basic product is free, users can pay for advanced features. Roughly 6% of users pay the 2.3 cents per minute to call cells and landlines. The average paying user spends $96 per year. Advertisements supplement income. CLICK ME Centralized engineering team in Estonia keeps everything running 2005 FIRST JOB eBay acquires Skype for $2.6B, half in cash and half in shares, but quickly discovers it can't figure out how to use it to turn a profit. Meanwhile, Microsoft acquires Skype competitor Teleo. 2006 NEW SKILL SET Skype adds video calling capabilities ("videotelephony"). CENSORED 2008 SKYPE CONE WILD TOM, Skype's partner in China, is caught storing transcripts of chat conversations containing politically controversial content. 2009 SKYPE GETS FIRED After taking a $936M loss, eBay sells 70% of Skype back to investors for $2B but retains 30%. 2010 A NEW CAREER Skype files an IPO, but then delays and then calls it off. By the end of 2010, Skype has 663M users, and 13% of the international call market. In the first 6 months, Skype users spent 95 billion minutes talking on voice and video chat. That's 180,000 years of By the end of 2010, Skype had 663M users and 13% of the international call market. total talk time in 6 months. Users / Subscribers: 40% of all minutes talked are now SKYPE 663M using video chat. FACEBOOK 600M VERIZON 104M ATETO 97.5M SKYPE STATISTICS 1B 800M 600M 400M 200M -200M -400M -600M -800M -1B *05 "06 "07 *08 *09 10 | SKYPE USERS REVENUE NET INCOME Though Skype can generate serious revenue, it hasn't been able to figure out how to make serious profit. This will be a big problem for Microsoft to try to solve. MR POPULAR Microsoft acquires Skype for $8.5B, 10 times Skype's 2010 revenue. On March 28, 2011, 30M people around the world were using Skype - a new record. 2011 40% of all minutes talked are now using video chat. INTEGRATION OF SKYPE COMPETITORS GOOGLE TALK Windows phones to compete with Google Voice on Android phones Launched in 2005, Google Talk is another VolP client with video chat capabilities for desktop and mobile. Xbox Live for use with Kinect APPLE FACETIME Apple's answer to Skype video chat for the iPhone, Though it also uses VolP technology, it currently only functions over Wi-Fi (no 3G capability yet). Office for business conferencing After a midlife crisis, Skype has turned things around big time. Though it's yet to be seen how he'll fare on his new career path, one thing is for sure: his new bosses at Microsoft are confident that he's going to be a really big deal. Created By: ONLINEMBA.COM https://infocua.credit-nuisse.com/app/article/index.efm?funeaction-OpenArticleanoid-163167&coid-7B0SAlang-EN http://classic-web.archive.org/web/2005110406435/ahare.akype.com/blog/insight/origin_of the name10word Na2akypeN22/h http://www.businessinsider.com/akype-hintory 2011-SPop-1 http://online.waj.com/article/SB12229162182397279.html http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2011/05/10/akype-the-atory-so-far/ http://blogs.skype.com/en/2011/03/30 million people online.htmi http://www.aec.gov// http://thenextweb.com/mierosoft/2011/0s/10/nkype-the story-so-far/ o/Archiven/edgar/data/14 98209/000119312510182561/dal.htmtrom83085_9