Skype in Pocket

ONE REASON FOR SKYPE'S continual growth is its strong position as a utility. And nothing makes something a dead-simple utility than a resemblance to a standard household item (like a phone). That's what Skype is for me. It fits in my pocket (see left) and it rings on my home DECT phone. During the last quarter, Skype’s registered users grew 41 percent to 521 million people. That means 10 times the population of Ireland became registered users of Skype during the summer. Revenues grew 29 percent to $185 million. Free Skype-to-Skype minutes grew 74 percent to 27.7 billion minutes. I was one of the consumers who paid for SkypeOut minutes, a section of Skype revenue that grew 44 percent to 3.1 billion minutes and paid the company $185m in revenues, up 29 percent from a year ago. If the current Skype trend line continues on its current slope, it could mean one billion dollars in annual revenue in early 2011.

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Skype shown running on Nokia N97. Figures from Marketwatch, 21 Oct 09.

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