A Strong Skype Remains Wary

In the face of what could be a huge launching platform for the VoIP phone systems giant, Skype remains cautious that their ability to continue to grow may be cut short at any time. Recent news reports that Skype plans on selling as much as $100 million in an IPO, a move that they have planned since their early days; however the purchase of Skype by eBay postponed that move to now.

This move could fund potential projects that could push Skype into a whole new realm of possibilities. Some future plans that Skype claims to be working on is group video chatting which would allow video conferencing between more than two parties, and perhaps a larger project is attracting small to medium-sized companies who can’t afford high end telephone systems by offering affordable teleconferencing and video chat capabilities.

Numbers have been up for Skype, as their user base increased from 397 million to 560 million within a year, and they currently have anywhere between 52 million to 124 million active users. Even the amount of paying customers has increased within the past year as they are currently at 8.1 million, up from 6.6 million last year. All of this leads to substantial financial growth for the VoIP Company as well, paving the way to their public offering.

Despite all of the cause for cheer and celebration, Skype remains wary of the possible actions that could be taken that would put a significant dent in their plans. A big worry that they have stated, is the amount of power that application store owners have. For instance, Skype is currently on Apple’s app store, however should at any time Apple decides that they would prefer to have their own VoIP application and not compete with Skype, they could easily remove Skype as a downloadable application, which could be disastrous for Skype.

Other providers could do this as well, including Android. Being ran by Google, Android may be motivated to, at some point, discriminate against Skype as Google has been working on their own VoIP programs. If Skype really wants to reach out to businesses, then ensuring that they stay in app stores should be one of their main concerns.

By: Andrew Sale

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Andrew Sale is an expert writer on telephone systems and is based in San Diego, California. He writes extensively for an online resource that provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs such as VoIP phone systems at Resource Nation.