2007-10-21

Skype minutes

On the “downloadable presentation” of the eBay quarterly results i found these facts:
  • Skype to Skype (S2S) minutes: 6.1 billions
  • SkypeOut minutes: 1.4 billion
  • Or, dividing revenue by SkypeOut minutes: 0.07 US$/SkypeOut minute
My interpretations or guesses concerning these numbers:
  • S2S minutes are diminishing, although the number of users is raising! One factor that has probably influenced this quarter is that it includes the Holiday/Summer period, traditionally a period with lower Skype usage. But this quarter is quite lower than the corresponding quarter of 2006. Are people using Skype to chat instead of talk?
  • SkypeOut minutes are not raising anymore, although income is still raising (see my previous post). Is the increase in revenue therefore only due the weak dollar? Indeed, the weakening of the dollar compared to the euro is about 8.8% since the beginning of the year. According to Skype, 83% of their income is generated outside the USA. Therefore we could extrapolate and say that 7% of the US$ income is due to currency fluctuations, and therefore not to "real SkypeOut minutes"!
  • The higher income compared to 2006 is also due to the “hidden” price increases of SkypeOut calls since the beginning of the year (connection fee, SkypePro, etc.).

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't forget the Indian campaign during the summer. As the number of users grew substantionally, it probably created some SO-minutes as well. The amaing drop in S2S-minutes might indicate that Skype is not so hype anymore...

Anonymous said...

The increase in revenue per user is due to SkypeIN, not SkypeOUT.

As for the "Indian Campaign", it has diluted the revenue per user, not improved it. In fact, while there are clearly lots more registered users in India, there is no evidence that they are online very much.

Jean Mercier said...

Personally i am not convinced that SkypeIn plays a significant role in the revenue story of Skype. But, this is a guess! I would like to know more numbers from Skype!