Amongst all the burning wrecks of the voice over IP startup scene, is it possible that a $40 device hawked on late-night TV may be emerging as one of the biggest VoIP success stories ever? If you believe founder Dan Borislow, that is what is happening with his idea called MagicJack, a simple USB-based VoIP device that Borislow claims will generate $100 million in revenue this year, a market momentum that may spark an initial public offering to help fund his ambitious expansion plans. Continue »
When Skype launched its mobile app on the iTunes App store in March, it quickly rose to the top of the charts, indicating that people had been thirsting for a mobile version of the Internet phone service. Meanwhile, INQ Mobile, a company that makes web-centric budget phones, has seen solid usage of Skype on its handsets. And why not? With 443.2 million subscribers using the service to make long-distance calls on the cheap, Skype qualifies as a king-maker. At the same time, Skype, which is eying an IPO, sees mobile devices as a way to goose up its revenue.
So when Palm released its much-awaited Pre device, we wondered if a Skype app would soon find its way into Palm’s app store, too, especially since the addition of a Skype app would make the Pre more attractive in an already crowded smartphone space. But according to a Skype spokesman, the company doesn’t have any plans to develop a Skype app for the Palm Pre. Continue »
We don’t quite need the U.S. Census to tell us that most (but not all) people love the Internet. Breakneck growth in the number of broadband connections, growing sales of cheap computers, and our growing reliance on modern communication tools, such as email, instant messages and Facebook, have become so pervasive that even the homeless need to be connected. That reliance has increased over the past 12 years, as shown by 2007 U.S. Census data. Here are some of the highlights from that data (which is now about 2 years old). Continue »
Twitter might be Oprah’s new tech love, but it goes without saying — she loves Skype, the Internet calling service that makes an appearance on her show pretty much every day. She is going to reaffirm her love for Skype on Thursday, May 21, 2009, in an episode called “Where the Skype Are You?”. The show will have videos from different locations around the world. And later, Skype President Josh Silverman will be making an appearance on the show to talk to Oprah about Skype and how to use it.
Second Life creator Linden Lab will announce on Wednesday that SL users have generated 15 billion voice minutes on their internal avatar-to-avatar VoIP service since the product was launched 18 months ago, and are now forecast to do 15 billion total voice minutes in 2009. By contrast, Skype handled 65 billion total voice minutes last year, according to parent company eBay (PDF).
Since Skype users aren’t usually communicating with each other in a virtual world, this might seem like an apples-to-oranges comparison. However, Linden has been emphasizing Second Life’s voice chat feature as a utility for educators and corporations with an SL presence who use it to conduct in-world conferences and other voice-driven applications. And tomorrow, the company will also announce a battery of voice services usable outside SL, including “AvaLine,” which enables mobile phone-to-avatar calling.
Linden VP Joe Miller told me the company believes this puts it in competition with Skype. Judging by SL’s high voice usage rates, it’s certainly a niche competitor. Then again, with Second Life’s roughly 750,000 monthly users compared to Skype’s 42 million-plus daily users, it’ll be a long time if ever that the VoIP giant feels the virtual pressure.
One thing is for sure: eBay, a disaster of an Internet company, really wants to rectify its megabillion-dollar mistake and get rid of Skype — even if it means taking a small haircut. But eBay CEO John Donahoe thinks the company is worth much more than $2 billion figure being thrown around by analysts, calling that valuation “low.” He is ignoring the fact that eBay doesn’t own the core IP for Skype and is in a legal tussle with founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. Of course, eBay spent $2.6 billion on Skype, so one can’t expect Donahoe to publicly admit that they got suckered and overpaid.
eBay hopes to spin out Skype in 2010. I chatted with Sarah Lacy on Yahoo Tech Ticker earlier this week (watch the video) about Skype’s IPO and why it could be a strong offering, unless of course the founders show up with a bunch of cash to buy it back. The company has been posting strong growth in recent months.
Skype is really looking to ramp up its revenues: It’s offering a 25 percent discount on its unlimited packages if you sign up for a 12-month plan. For instance, if you sign up for the Unlimited World plan, which costs $12.95 a month, you get 25 percent off the $116.55 annual tab, bringing it to just $116.55. The good news — you can opt out of the plan whenever you want.
Ever since Skype’s iPhone client enabled Skype-to-Skype calls (and send IMs) for free over Wi-Fi, I’ve been wondering what the next step towards the mobilization of Skype would be. The answer came today by the way of 3 UK, a 3G wireless operator. The company unveiled a new $3, Skype-enabled SIM card that will allow anyone to make Skype-to-Skype calls and send IMs from any phone on 3’s wireless broadband network. Of course, for the service to work, mobile subscribers would have to buy 3’s data plans, which are often more expensive than those just for voice. Skype accounts for 1.5 million minutes on the 3 network everyday. Continue »
Regardless of what happens to Skype — if it’s resold to founders, merged with another web giant or spun off via an initial public offering — one thing remains clear: The company is showing raw growth in both its revenues and registered user numbers. For the first quarter of 2009, the company reported revenues of $153.2 million vs. $145 million in the first fourth quarter of 2008.
It added 37.9 million new users during the quarter and now has a total of 443.2 million registered users. In comparison, the company ended 2008 with 405 million subscribers. In the previous quarter it added about 35 million new registered users. Skype, which has become the largest long-distance company, has been experiencing slowdown in its per-user revenues. The company logged 2.9 billion Skype Out minutes, or about 6.53 minutes per user.
Last night, reader Jim Rob Jones emailed to express his displeasure over my switch to the BlackBerry, calling us “irrelevant” because I am not carrying an iPhone. Well, Jim, since I’m not willing to put up with the poor 3G connections from AT&T, I carry an iPod Touch, which does pretty much the same job and allows me to write about iPhone Platform apps. Of course, it does prevent me from yelling at my iPhone, but my doctor thinks that is a good thing. With Wi-Fi and a growing number of VoIP apps such as Skype, Nimbuzz and Truphone, I can also use it to make outbound calls. Today Vopium,a low-cost VoIP service provider, jumped in the fray and released an iPhone app. The company will add iPod Touch support for its service in a couple of weeks. I will check it out then. Meanwhile, if you have an iPhone, you can sign up for their service today, and get 30 minutes of free calls and 30 text messages (SMS). Vopium also works on other handsets, such as BlackBerry and Symbian-based phones.
