Geographical numbers

Why Skype looks at the USA separately, and for the rest looks at regions, not even continents, is quite funny for a “theoretically” European company. But finally they unveil something about the geographical spread of Skype users.

The first graph is the geographical distribution of Skype users. EMEA means Europe – Middle East – Africa. Interesting to see that EMEA still takes the lead compared to ALL Americas (57% compared to 27%). I would even say: Europe takes the lead in the number of Skype users, because the number of Africa and Middle-East users is probably quite smaller compared to European users. Well, historically, Skype started in Europe, and cross border phone calls are still expensive in Europe. Therefore Skype is beneficial for individual users.

The second graph is the number of Skype users compared to total internet users of the mentioned regions. Here again, if I suppose that EMEA is mainly Europe, it looks like Skype can still push its growth in the Americas and Asia. 16% of EMEA Internet users have Skype according to the data provided by Skype (therefore probably 20% or more in only Europe), while the USA scores only 9%. Again, I think that Skype is much more interesting to use in Europe than in the USA, because of the small countries, some State “quasi” monopolies in telecommunication, and therefore high international communication costs. Skype is therefore a fantastic cost cutter. Probably the USA and other big American countries don’t feel that need as much as we Europeans do!

And concerning Asia and Africa: there is still growth ahead for Skype, if these continents continue to promote the internet penetration!

Waw, improved numbers!

Skype announced yesterday that it filed a registration statement for an Initial Public Offering or IPO.
But, it also had to communicate some numbers, and I copy some concerning the first half of 2010:

• 95 billion calling minutes over Skype
• approximately 40% of which were video
• $ 13.1 million net income
• 87% of net revenues were generated by SkypeOut
• 8.1 million paying users

But more astonishingly, they also mentioned this :

• We have 124 million connected users

Why does this surprise me? Well, until some weeks ago they claimed to have more than half a billion users (560 million), even my Flemish Financial Newspaper still used that number today!
And now they admit that this was an “overstatement” (their words)! That’s what I always shouted out very loudly on this blog! Even the 124 million is probably an overstatement, because some people use several accounts (for instance some scammers and myself), but it is much closer to the reality.
With 23 million users online at peak time, the 124 million users is “credible”: indeed, quite a lot of users have their computers switched off, or do not run the Skype client permanently, therefore the numbers of concurrent people online that you see in your Skype client is an understatement of the real numbers of users.

But, good, Skype will (have to) publish more numbers than the previous months! And I can revive my blog!

Breaking the promise?

In the past, Skype always claimed that "Skype to Skype calls will always be free".

Well, Skype doesn’t keep its promises anymore. With the release of the 2.0 iPhone Skype app you can read the following statement:

"What’s New in Version 2.0.0?
Call using your 3G connection. Skype-to-Skype calls on 3G are free until the end of 2010, after which there will be a small monthly fee."

What next?

1 billion users soon?

Some days ago I solved for a colleague a small “Skype microphone problem”, and I discovered something funny. He possesses 4 usernames, because each time he installed Skype on a new computer, Skype asks him to create a new account. He wasn’t aware and it is indeed not always evident, that you can use your old account (if you still remember the password!).

Therefore, is my colleague equivalent to “4 active users”, 4 users, or 4 user accounts? Skype usually uses the term “user” and sometimes “registered user”. Both definitions are of course misleading, as I explained several times in the past here and here and here.

Anyway, Skype continues to claim that they have astronomical high numbers of users, as in the following statement: Skype expects 1 billion users by 2015 of May 21 in boston.com.

What interested me more in that article, was that I finally got the yearly revenue number of 2009: 716 million US$. When we look at the graph below, the growth seems to have been “as expected”.Since the demerger of Skype from eBay, financial reporting became very scarce, unless I didn’t find the right sources yet. I hope they will start to communicate again in a more decent way.

The fastest million ever

Yesterday Skype reached another million milestone: 22 million concurrent users online. There was never such a short time span between two million milestones! Only 7 days!
Therefore this is two records at once!

At the same time several bloggers and web papers reported the recent numbers of TeleGeography: “Skype traffic increases at astonishing pace”;

Astonishing, and still, not really surprising: Skype to Skype calls are free and the quality of the calls is superb, video included!

Again misleading numbers!

From BusinessWeek, today:

Skype has more than 520 million users and is the largest provider of international calling, accounting for 12 percent of cross-border voice traffic, according to Washington-based research firm Telegeography. Skype has said it’s on schedule to generate $1 billion in sales in 2011.

If the number of users is true, this would mean that one out of 13 inhabitants of this planet is using Skype! As i already said before, this is complete nonsense. If Skype continues to grow, soon they will have more users then people on this World (grin).

What about dead Skype users, users who have multiple accounts (for various reasons going from scamming to honest reasons), users who abandoned Skype, etc. etc. ?????

And I will always continue to mention those Skype lies, every time I discover them!

By the way, congratulations to the new Chairman of Skype. I hope mister Miles Flint will read this, and ask the Skype Management to publish honest numbers!

21 million concurrent users online

Right now, 18h55 GMT+2 there are about 21,200,000 users online.

But it was already yesterday January 11 that the 21 million milestone was reached.

Well, the growth is going on!

Skype RSS feeds down

Is this due to the new management of Skype after departing (partially) from eBay?

The RSS feeds concerning number of users online and the number of downloads got stuck on November 30!

I hope the new management will improve the information they provide to the public, and will communicate some "real numbers" concerning the "active users".

Of course, and I hope this doesn't change, the number of concurrent users onlmine is still visible in the Skype client, and right now (15h30 GMT+2, Sunday January 10) it was:

Belgacom loves Skype in Belgium?

Will my Skype still work?
Belgacom is the former monopolist State owned telephone company in Belgium, and they still have a big part of the market, especially of ADSL internet connections. And although the logos of Skype and Belgacom have almost the same color, I don't think they love each other.

I got a very disturbing e-mail this morning. I translate it from Dutch:

"Dear customer,

To provide your internet connection with the most optimal protection against viruses, hackers, etc. Belgacom takes continuously a lot of protective actions. Therefore, from Monday November 30 on, we implement a major protection intervention on our network: TCP-ports 80, 23 and 443 will be closed for all external traffic towards your network (incoming sessions …)

If you use your internet connection simply to surf or to mail, then you will not notice anything and you don’t need to continue to read.

Only some very specific applications (like web servers) will not work anymore."

And then they give instruction how to unblock the ports!
(The red marked text above is their "marking").

So, will my Skype still work? Technical people know that Skype uses the ports 80 and 443. I am curious, and am awaiting Monday 30 to see what happens. I’ll give feedback for sure.

And of course, there is a workaround, but …

[Feedback November 30: it still works!]

50 million or half a billion?

Read the Skype blog here!

Fantastic! As usual they claim they have huge amounts of users, in this case they say: (Skype) already connects over half a billion people around the globe through voice and video conversations that span oceans and time zones.

Why do they exaggerate? Why do they forget to say that it is “usernames” they should say, not users!

• I have registered 26 usernames, and I use usually only one. Am I “26 users”?
• My father died last year (unafortunately). Is he still a user? Perhaps he is still alive?
• My brother lost his password and made a new account. Is he two (2) users?
• Some spammers register new usernames every day. Are it always different users?
• And a friend tried Skype, but doesn't use it anymore. But he is still a user, according to Skype!
  

No, no, no, Skype probably has only some 50 million regular users, not half a billion. How do you otherwise explain that there are ONLY 20 million users online at the same moment at some moments of a day?

When will Skype stop with those lies?

20 million users online

Late, yes I know, I am late to report it (I was abroad and didn’t use internet).
I was warned by Dick Schiferli from Pamela that Skype reached 20 million concurrent users online for the first time last Monday, and he published it on his PamNews.com blog. This is the 6th time this year that Skype adds a million. Concerning this metric, this is a fantastic year for Skype.And while I mentioned Pamela … some readers are perhaps wondering what Pamela is? Well, it is really “THE Swiss Knife” for Skype: answering machine, video and voice recording, birthday announcements, mood editor, automatic chat answers (when you are away for instance), etc. Really fantastic: see www.pamela.biz.

And you want to fax with Skype? Impossible you think? Click on the next icon :-)

Skype Tip No Worm

I got a strange warning message this morning after starting my computer:According to the Skype Forum, this isn't a worm or other intrusion but a Skype feature related to Firefox or Explorer, see Skypenames.exe: what is that?.
It could explain why my Firefox experienced some serious slowdowns the last weeks. But anyway, nothing to be really worried about. But, why is it called a "useful tip" while i disabled all my "notifications" in my Skype Options?

What I am worried about (for Skype): how many people will get scared and will uninstall Skype?

Quarterly results Skype

Skype continues its steady growth, but the financials don’t convince me!

Skype to Skype minutes grew quite well, more than 8%. However, this doesn’t generate direct revenue. The revenue comes mainly from people calling fixed or mobile lines, therefore from SkypeOut.SkypeOut minutes grew by some 3%. But, when looking at the slope of the curve, paid minutes seem to reach some saturation level, meaning that the paying user base is slowly reaching a kind of maximum.

This is reflected in the revenues, although the graph in dollars shows an increase of about 8%! Indeed, 80% of the revenue of Skype is coming from outside the USA. Therefore, the weakness of the dollar or the strength of the euro and other currencies has a positive impact on the dollar revenue.Recalculating the financial growth of Skype in euros, it is only a 3% growth. After all, this is really quite good: very few businesses can show such a growth in only one quarter. But, what concerns me is the slowing down of the growth of SkypeOut minutes! Something has to be done on that side!

And ... again a million

Only three weeks, and the second time this year that Skype adds a million concurrent users online in only 3 weeks, (this is a record speed) and also the fifth million milestone this year, another absolute record. And the growth goes on despite competing products, lawsuits, new owners, eBay, Police and intelligence agencies threats and unhappiness, ...
I am really interested to see the quarterly results of Skype within eBay, and perhaps one of my previous earnings predictions will be way too low.

RocketMan flew away

He was one of the biggest helpers on the Skype Forum, we even had some ocasional private chats. He was a very nice man, and although he fought his illness, he left some days ago wife and kids and (least important) our Skype community.See also the post of Raul Liive, Skype Staff on the Skype Forum.

18 million online at the same time

The best measure of the growth of Skype users is still the top "concurrent users online". After the "usual summer recession", we finally reached today a new top of 18 million concurrent users online at about 16h GMT.
I am really happy to see that Skype is still growing as expected.

Real wedding of a virtual contact

For us Belgians, the Dutch province Friesland is about the End of the World. Yesterday I went there for the first time of my life to “really” meet one of my “virtual” Skype contacts for the first time in the 4 years that we know each other. And it wasn’t an ordinary visit: I got an invitation for her wedding (yes, it is a woman).Ike is one of the few persons who fell in love with Skype, became a Skype Forum contributor, then got the Super User recognition from Skype, got promoted to Forum Moderator, and finally works now for Skype! You can read part of her story on her own blog.

It was a very beautiful wedding. Tjep, her husband, is a very nice man with – just alike Ike – a huge sense of humor. Only the Gods were angry, because it rained quite a lot. But, probably they were jealous!

Skype is leaving eBay

Having a Skype blog, and although this post isn’t really about numbers, I really have to publish it: A New Chapter is the title of a blogpost on the Skype Blog by Josh Silverman, CEO of Skype, concerning the “spinning off from eBay”. Now not a speculation anymore, but facts. Read the post!

Three comments on this:

• Will Josh stay as CEO? I hope so, because I liked his style (seen from a distance - I am not an insider);
• I disliked the takeover by eBay from the beginning, therefore I feel relieved;
• I hope they will publish other – better – more reliable – more honest – more ... numbers! This will revive my blog!

Anyway … good luck Skype, thumbs up!

For the sake of completeness ...

I am still not in a blogging mood, enough work, and other nice things to do.
Anyway, here my update concerning the contribution of Skype’s business to eBay benefit or loss, see previous posts for more explanations …

Quarter 2, 2009 results

I don’t blog that often the last months, mainly because I have a lot of professional work. It doesn’t mean that I am not awake and listening to the Skype eco-cloud. And better late than never, but here my last analysis of the Skype Quarter 2 results.

Usernames (not equal to USERS!) grew linearly as in the previous months.
The revenue growth quarter to quarter was in US$ quite stronger than the previous one and in €uro linear! Probably the stronger dollar growth can be explained mainly by exchange rate differences.
The revenue per user name is still quite stable. As I said many times before, and I will continue to repeat this, this is a useless metric. It would be better if we could have the revenue per active user!
Skype to Skype minutes showed again a slightly less fast growth.
SkypeOut minutes showed also and again a lesser growth!

Financially this was a good quarter, in US$. But, I am a little worried about the slower growth of Skype minutes. Is Skype beginning to saturate? I am curious about the growth of users online in September, after the yearly summer recession. Only then I’ll know if my concern is justified.