Even though it is embroiled in a nasty legal battle with its founders over its future, Skype continues to rack up impressive numbers. In today’s third quarter earnings from eBay (which still owns Skype, but is preparing to unload it), the company breaks out Skype’s performance (see slide above).
Skype’s registered users grew 41 percent to 521 million people. That’s a stunning 40 million new registered users in the past three months. Revenues grew 29 percent to $185 million. Free Skype-to-Skype minutes grew 74 percent to 27.7 billion minutes, whereas SkypeOut minutes (which is what members pay for) grew 44 percent to 3.1 billion minutes.
All of those SkypeOut calls translated to a healthy $185 million in revenues, up 29 percent from a year ago. If it keeps up at this pace, it should easily be able to exceed its $1 billion annual revenue goal by 2011.
Skype was one of the few bright spots in eBay’s earnings, along with Paypal, which brought in $688 million in revenues (up 15 percent). eBay’s bread-and-butter marketplaces business was down 1 percent to $1.365 billion.
Skype are obviously on to something. They just worry about someone grabbing market share.
Blanket Wifi from AT&T and Verizon within the next 5 years. This is the goldrush.
If Ebay is pulling in this much revenue now, the sweet spot for Skype is within 7 years from now. Skype was simply ahead of its time. When we are all wrapped in 100MBPS Wifi, Skype is the brand we already know well that can become a fortune when wifi replaces 3/4G mobile networks.
Still a bit flaky if you ask me, still a fair few dropped calls etc. I’d say the network is at fault as much as anyone but you’re right the network gets sorted then Skype is a license to print money.
Now imagine what happens when they move from $1.25/year consumers to $125/year business users.
What about all of the other stuff they own? Like Half.com, StubHub, etc.
581 – 41 = 480
581 / 480 ~ 8%
How did you get 41% growth??
The growth was year-on-year..
Sorry, that 581 was 521 before my fat fingers got involved.
Wow that’s more users then facebook
I’m a skype subscriber, and although I think they’re doing an ok job, I’d like to see some improvements.
First off, the client sucks. It’s hard to use, hard to find things (like number buttons, hello). Plus it doesn’t make it easy for me to setup things like scripts (i.e. – dial a number & navigate an IVR).
Secondly, I live in Canada and they still can’t get me SkypeIn. They’ve got so many instant customers up here that’ll sign up on Day One…..but everyday they don’t offer it, they lose more potential customers.
The Canadian SkypeIn number thing is the CRTC, not Skype. Basically if you offer a number, you have to offer 911 – until that changes I don’t expect we will see SkypeIn anytime soon in Canada.
It’s amazing. 521 million users are so much. I really like skype and the voice chat on skype is amazing feature. it’s just like we are talking on phone.
A lot of these users are inactive, like me. But Skype doesn’t allow us to delete our accounts for security reasons, even if we’re not terrorists.
Skype are lucky they were first out, and offered the best initial shape on an amazinf product. The client has hardly changed and is definitely ackward to use. Why is it I’m sometimes stumbling to find the dial button!
Also, they dropped the ball with the BB app. They promised a BB app in May, and since have refused to comment on when one might come out.
Client sucks, voice quality sucks most of the time, i never understood why ppl even use that pos.
What sort of issues do you experience with sound quality?
Skype is great. Some people still ask why it is so successful.
Well, I dont know about you guys, but I use the Skype to Skype and their chat service at least fifteen times a day. We have offices in Spain, South Africa, New Zealand and a development team in The Ukraine and it works pretty well. Infact would be pretty lost without it.
Why is eBay selling Skype again?