torstensson.com, channeling Swedish business weekly Affärsvärlden, points out that Skype’s annual revenues are in the $70 million range.
> Skype co-founder and CEO Niklas Zennström shed some light on the company’s revenue. Skype has 51 million registered users and more than 2 million customers. Registered users are growing 130,000 per day. …More interesting was the information about Skype’s monthly revenue per user. According to Niklas Zennström Skype’s has income of “a couple of few dollars per month per customer”. Assuming that a couple of dollars equals three dollars, Skype has annual revenue of $72+ million.
Given that Skype started offering pay services in April 2005, I guess it should be more like $24 million or so. It might be on track to do $72 million in its first year. Update: Rick points out that the SkypeOut has been live for more than a year. My bad!
5 trackbacks so far
6:03 AM PT
[...] Rumours say eBay might be about to acquire Skype. I have two questions for eBay: - Why pay so much ($2Bn to $5n for a $72M revenue company)? - Why do you think VoIP fits with your business model? [...]
5:38 PM PT
eBay+Skype - What about Amazon?
The big story today in the world of technology (or M&A, depending on how you look at it), originally…
10:35 PM PT
[...] SKYPE Internationally, Skype is arguably the leading brand for VoIP, with over 163M software downloads, 50M active accounts and an estimated $72M annual revenues. [...]
7:51 AM PT
Ebay > Skype - Aggiornamento 2
Continuano le mie perplessità sul prezzo d’acquisto di Skype. In questo post di pochi giorni fa, si parlava di 72 mln di dollari di utili annui con 51 milioni di utenti registrati e una crescita di 130.000 utenti registrati al
11:35 AM PT
[...] This, of course, is problematic with Skype, as a privately held company. Their assets must be negligible, and their revenue must be in the tens-of-millions (at $72 million in revenue, eBay�s offer is 57 times Skype�s revenue) so what is that humongous dollar amount based on? Irrational Exuberance? Filed under: Uncategorized and Politics and News and Economics Comments: [...]
9 comments so far
12:33 PM PT
Skype’s been offering SkypeOut since April 2004, not 2005.
12:39 PM PT
This is right in line with my expectations. Now the big question is “What is their Gross Margin.” Of the 2 cents (recently reduced to 1.5) per minute of SkypeOut, how much of that is Skype’s?
Overall, they must doing well to have hired so many people in the past year. So, I’m guessing they get 50% of gross revenues.
1:21 PM PT
you are right rick - skypein started in april 2005. time to make that change.
2:36 PM PT
SkypeIn customers contribute $3/month (say 30 Euros for the annual less payment service fees yields USD$36). Not sure how many SkypeIn customers there are.
For SkypeOut, USD$.02 per minute would mean 150 minutes per month to generate USD$3. Not an insignificant number of minutes of use.
Facts and transparency would clear all of this up.
5:00 PM PT
jake, as i have been saying all along / skype needs to make it all clear (if not in revenues) then in terms of minutes used for skypein/skype out. anyway i can go on ranting about this all day long…. :-)
8:30 PM PT
think of the 12 Billion minutes of SKYPE despite the ”how much REVENUES do they make”’———-their EXIT strategy is obviously to sell out to Google or somebody BIG!
Skibare
9:09 PM PT
In my book, a couple of dollars is $2/month.
So why overstate by a factor of 50%?
9:43 PM PT
john, i guess we are having a little “lost in translation” issue here. cannot tell if it is couple of dollars or $3 dollars. i wish someone would read the original article in swedish and translate accurately for all of us
12:33 AM PT
Don’t forget in most European markets Skype will also receive a share of temination fees for their SkypeIn service.
How much will depend on the market and their agreements with the PSTN Wholesaler.
I would not be at all surprised if this could add on average another 30% to the ARPU. So instead of just getting €30 pa. They are getting more like €40 pa.
Leave a Comment