CES: Skype acquiring mobile video expert Qik | Deep Tech - CNET News

Skype, a powerhouse in the area of voice and video chat over the Net, said today it's acquiring Qik, a mobile video specialist.

The move stands to expand what Skype can mobile phones. Today it's got apps for voice chat, but Qik brings video to the party with applications that run today on Android, iPhone, Symbian, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile.

"Together, Skype and Qik will focus on providing a richer, more integrated experience that will allow people globally to share experiences in real-time video across different platforms, as well as store those moments so they can be viewed anytime later," Skype said in a statement. (Click here for a post on the announcement fromCES.)

Video chat is increasingly important as phone makers add front-facing cameras for video chat and 4G networks add at least theoretical faster data-transfer speeds. At the CES show this week, many demonstrations feature video chat--including Google's upcoming Honeycomb version of Android with the feature apparently built in.

Apple's newer version of iOS also enables video chat, though Qik doesn't have an app for that platform. So although Skype has power and a strong subscriber base, it also has big competitors.

The acquisition also has ramifications for Skype's technology assets and for moving beyond just communications.

"The acquisition of Qik helps accelerate Skype's leadership in video by adding recording, sharing, and storing capabilities to Skype's product portfolio. Through this acquisition, Skype will also be able to leverage the engineering expertise that is behind Qik's Smart Streaming technology, which optimizes video transmission over wireless networks," the companies said.

Qik, headquartered in Redwood City, Calif., has 60 employees. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.

by Stephen Shankland CNet News January 6, 2010

CES: Skype acquiring mobile video expert Qik | Deep Tech - CNET News

Five Ways Gmail Chat Looks Better than Skype - PCWorld Business Center

Your Gmail account sends e-mail, allows video and online chat, and now can call your contacts in the United States and Canada for free.

Google announced on its corporate blog today that its U.S. users will enjoy free calls, with slightly higher rates to other countries, by using the voice and video service embedded in Gmail Chat. The service is expected to bite into Skype's VoIP service, with Google posting rates that it says beat a "leading Internet telephony client."

Here are some reasons why Gmail Chat may be a better choice, at least for now.

1. Rates

International rates for Gmail calls range wildly, from $6.90 a minute to call Inmarsat, a British mobile satellite company, to 2 cents a minute to call Poland or Brazil. Other rates compare fairly closely, with Gmail voice calling rates 2 cents a minute to France versus 2.4 cents a minute for Skype (2.1 cents plus connection fee), but Google is offering free, unlimited phone calls to the United States and Canada.

That could best Skype’s rate by $60 for the rest of the year, since Skype charges $12 each quarter for a phone number and $2.99 each month for unlimited calls to North America on its pay-as-you-go program.

2. Google Voice

This service, offered free by Google, consolidates all your phone numbers into a single number, and is being incorporated into the new Gmail system. Users already with Google Voice numbers will have that number displayed on caller ID and can receive calls to this number. Skype has to use a different number than your phone number (unless, for instance, you use Google Voice). In many ways, Google is cutting out the middle man in this relationship by offering to skip over Skype entirely.

3. Videoconferencing and Other Business Apps

While Skype offers free video chat, it also plans on packaging videoconferencing for business as a way to raise revenue for shareholders. Gmail also offers free video chat. While it hasn't been added yet, a spokesman said Google plans also to add voice chat to Google Apps, which is specifically aimed at companies.

Google has also expanded its Gmail contacts page to include more data like addresses and phone numbers. Along with the additions, Google has taken security seriously by alerting users of suspicious activity on their Gmail account.

4. The Google Cachet

Granted, Skype has 560 million registered users and 8 million paying users. Google's various sites have about 179 million unique users each month, according to ComScore. Google regularly expands its services' interfaces to meet users' needs.Skype, which just made its IPO, is still working on its untested business model. In five years I'm confident that Gmail will still be around, but I'm not so sure about Skype.

5. It's Free to Try

Gmail's free rate in the United States and Canada lasts at least until the end of the year, and Google said it plans to roll out the new system in the next few days. As soon as users see "Call Phones" showing up in their Gmail chat list, they're ready to go.

There are a few concerns about Gmail's phone call system, the biggest being when the free rate will end. So far Google hasn't give any answers, except to say it will be free until the end of the year. Unless the voice calls continue to be cheaper than Skype in January, Google doesn't have a prayer.

However, for now, business owners who have never used Skype will lose nothing if they try the new Google service. Perhaps they may even find that the international call costs are cheaper than their current calling plan, Skype included.

By Barbara E. Hernandez, PC World August 25, 2010

Five Ways Gmail Chat Looks Better than Skype - PCWorld Business Center

Skype Files For IPO, Only 6 Percent Of Users Pay

Preparing for an eventual public offering, Skype has now filed an IPO registration statement with the SEC. The maximum proposed offering amount is listed as $100 million, but that is just a placeholder amount.

According to the filing, Skype’s revenues for the first six months of 2010 were $406 million, with a net income of only $13 million. But a big portion of that was from interest income. That is only a 3 percent net margin, and this isn’t exactly a new business. Its income from operations was only $1.4 million for the six months. However, its gross margins are 51 percent, and have been expanding steadily as the company benefits from the scale of is operations and is able to negotiate lower telephone termination fees around the world.

On the IPO road show, Skype will no doubt point to its adjusted EBITDA (earnings before income taxes and depreciation) numbers, which conveniently strip out things like goodwill, stock-based compensation and litigation expenses. Adjusted EBITDA for the first half of 2010 was $115.7 million, up 54 percent from a year ago. The company currently has $85 million in cash. These numbers reflect pro forma adjustments to Skype’s historical financial statements. (Click on the financial results table below to enlarge):

One interesting tidbit from the filing is that Skype had to pay $344 million to settle with the Skype founders for the Joltid peer-to-peer technology that at one point threatened to hold up the spin-off of Skype from eBay.

The filing also reveals that Skype “users made 95 billion minutes of voice and video calls” during the first half of 2010, with a full 40 percent of those minutes being video. Skype users also sent 84 million SMS text messages through Skype during the period.

As of June 30, Skype was averaging 124 million users a month, with only 8.1 million of those paying users (out of a total of 560 million registered users). Those users, however, pay an average of $96 a year. Skype’s strategy is to keep growing its overall number of users and convert more of them to paying customers.

Getting more people to buy Skype-Out minutes will obviously not be sufficient. Skype also plans on adding advertising revenues and enterprise products (37 percent of users surveyed say they use Skype for business purposes). According to the filing, part of Skype’s strategy will be to:

Develop new monetization models, including advertising. Our users made over 152 billion minutes of Skype-to-Skype calls in the twelve months ended June 30, 2010. We believe this represents a meaningful opportunity to increase our revenue from alternative monetization models, including advertising, gaming and virtual gifts.

The company is based in Luxemborg and is offering American depository shares. A new holding company will be created following the offering which will combine the ownership from public investors, private investors such as Silver Lake Partners and Andreessen Horowitz, and employees. The convoluted chart below shows what the new ownership structure will look like:

by Erick Schonfeld TechCrunch August 9, 2010

Skype Files For IPO, Only 6 Percent Of Users Pay

Skype for iPhone now supports 3G, but free ride's ending - Yahoo! News

by Ben Patterson Yahoo! News June 3, 20101

The latest version of Skype for the iPhone will at last let you make Skype calls over AT&T's 3G network — meaning free voice calls for everyone, right? Not so fast, say Skype execs. Charges for free-for-now Skype-to-Skype calls are coming, and don't forget that AT&T is ditching its unlimited data plans. Version 2.0 of the Skype iPhone app came out Sunday, supporting the long-awaited ability to place Skype calls over AT&T's 3G data network. Under pressure from federal regulators, AT&T had actually given the green light to Skype calls last year, but the Skype app itself only worked over Wi-Fi until just now.

What's so special about Skype calls over 3G? Theoretically, it means you can bypass AT&T's voice network altogether — even when you're out of Wi-Fi range — letting you place unlimited voice calls with fellow Skype users for the low price of nothing. You can also call landlines and non-Skype users worldwide (about 30 countries are included) for about 2 cents a minute. (I use the for-pay Skype service over Wi-Fi all the time because of the terrible AT&T reception in my Brooklyn apartment.)

In practical terms, the iPhone Skype app has some limitations, though. It still doesn't support the iPhone's "push notification" feature, which pops up an alert for an app that isn't currently running — like, say, an incoming Skype call. That's the bad news. The good news is that Skype will be able to warn you of incoming calls once the new multitasking iPhone 4.0 software arrives this summer (possibly even next week).

But Skype's killer feature — free Skype-to-Skype calling — is going away sooner rather than later, at least as far as the iPhone and AT&T's 3G network is concerned. Skype has announced that it will offer free Skype-to-Skype 3G calls only "until the end of 2010," after which it will start charging a "small monthly fee." How small? No word yet. (Skype-to-Skype calls over Wi-Fi will still be free.)

Not only is the free ride ending for 3G Skype-to-Skype calls, there's also the little wrinkle of AT&T's bombshell announcement that it's phasing out its unlimited 3G data plans, starting June 7. New customers will pay $25 a month for 2GB of data, or $15 a month for 200MB, plus any overage charges ($10 for an extra GB in the case of the 2GB plan, or $15 for another 200MB for the 200MB option). If you currently have an unlimited, $30-a-month 3G plan through AT&T, you'll be grandfathered in.

So AT&T subscribers who end up with new capped data plans will find that 3G Skype calls eat into their monthly data allowances, and overage fees will loom if you're an inveterate Chatty Cathy.

Theoretically, anyway. What's the reality? How much data does a typical 3G Skype call consume?

The Skype support site covers this issue in a relatively roundabout way, estimating that if you have 20 Skype contacts, log on for 90 minutes a day, engage in 25 daily minutes of Skype text chat, and make 20 minutes of Skype calls (whether that's 20 minutes a day or a month isn't clear; I'm inclined to think it's the latter), you'll burn through "just under 1MB" of data a month.

That sounded a little low to me, so I conducted my own experiment. I reset my iPhone's data usage statistics, fired up Skype and called Moviefone for 10 minutes, occasionally tapping a number key to keep the call going. (No, I didn't do a lot of chatting on the call; I'm not much of a talker anyway, but the Moviefone guy was nattering away the entire time.)

When 10 minutes were up, I hung up and checked my 3G usage statistics: 388KB upstream, 1.8MB downstream, for a total of about 2.2MB.

So using those numbers, if I were to call Moviefone for 450 minutes a month (that's my monthly allotment of AT&T voice minutes, only a fraction of which I ever use), I'd use up close to 100MB, or half of the data allowed under AT&T's $15/month 200MB plan.

How big a problem that is depends, of course, on your monthly calling habits. If you're like me and you make maybe 30 minutes of Skype calls a month, no big deal. But if you're planning to hold lengthy daily conference calls over 3G via Skype, well ... Skype might not be much of a bargain anymore.

What do you think? Do Skype's plans for iPhone fees, combined with AT&T's new capped data plans, drain most of the appeal out of the free-for-now calling service? Or will you keep using Skype despite the upcoming fees and data caps?

• Reuters: Nearly 5 million downloaded Skype iPhone 3G app
• Skype: How much data does Skype on my mobile use?

Skype for iPhone now supports 3G, but free ride's ending - Yahoo! News

Skype to offer group video chat for the first time | Mail Online

By Daily Mail Reporter May 9, 2010

The free internet calling service Skype will allow group video chats for the first time.

From next week users will be able to chat with up to four other people at the same time.

Although it will be free during an initial testing period Skype will start charging for it along with some other upcoming features in three or four months.

Skype users can make video calls to each other around the world for free. The new group chat feature will be charged

Skype will continue to allow people to make normal voice or video calls and send instant messages to other Skype users for no charge.

Users pay for services such as making calls from a PC to a landline or cell phone.

Skype consumer manager Neil Stevens, said group video chat will first be available to those who use the software on Windows PCs, and the company expects to roll out a Mac version later this year.

Mr Stevens said the feature is the one users have requested most.

He added that the company also plans to focus on getting Skype on devices beyond computers, such as smart phones. Skype has been installed on 12 million of Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch devices and calls are made over WiFi. An app is being developed for Apple's iPad.

Skype will also expand its monthly subscription offerings to include calls to both mobiles and landlines in more than 170 countries from next week.

The company's existing subscription plans include one that allows calls to more than 40 countries, but they focus mostly on calls to landlines. That is generally cheaper for the company than routing calls from the internet to cell phones.

Next Wednesday Skype plans to unveil new subscriptions that let users choose which countries they want to call and whether they want to call landlines and mobiles or just one of the two.

Skype helped to pioneer internet calls and says it now has more than 560 million users world-wide.

The company was sold late last year by eBay for about £1.3billion to an investor group that includes Skype's founders.

Skype to offer group video chat for the first time | Mail Online