2008-09-24

Fall-Winter-Summer growth

As usual after a Northern Hemisphere Summer, the growth of Skype users is again visible. Not that there is no growth in summer, but, less people are working, more people switch their computers off while they are in the garden, or they are traveling and have less access to internet. Therefore, fewer users are online at the same time.

Those summers are very visible on the "million milestones" graph that I published last week. In all the past years, excluding the first year, the dots representing the "million milestones" are quite close to each other (see the brown left braces), except when there is a July-August period in the middle (see the red "summer" arrows).So, what for 2008-2009? I would guess that Skype will as usual add two more "million dots' to its graph before July 2009 (see the Sky(pe) Blue extrapolated dots), going well over the 15 million people online. And I predict also that Skype will reach 16 million concurrent users somewhere around September 2009. But it is only a guess :-)

3 comments:

Hudson said...

You're being too conservative. I say Skype will hit 14 million in November, 15 million in January, 16 million in March, and 17 million by next September.

Now here is a puzzle for you to figure out. Every year since Skype has existed, we have see European growth stronger in the spring than in the fall, and the opposite is true for America. Why?

Jean Mercier said...

The puzzle:

If your "season" theory is right, then perhaps i have a first clue tothe puzzle:

a reason could be that "America" timezones = South + North America, and this means "Northern + Southern Hemisphere" = "Spring + Fall".

"Europe" timezones = "Europe + Africa". But, the weight of African Internet penetration is very small compared to Europe AND South America. Therefore, i would say "Europe" = "Europe", and indeed seasonal effects could be more important.

Nachos Recipes said...

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