
Selling The Company Back To The Founders - jasonlbaptiste
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/04/selling-the-company-back-to-the-founders.html
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ruslan
One must be totally stupid to get Skype back for $1Bb cause VoIP is very
incredibly competitive area. Even if Skype's userbase and minutes grow, their
revenuve will most likely decline.

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potatolicious
Is VOIP really that competitive? I know there are a lot of SIP providers out
there and that their services are incredibly commoditized - but a SIP provider
Skype is not.

Name a single other app/service with a well-established and globally-known
brand name like Skype, where you can download an app, chat for free
immediately with nearly everyone online, and also make land-line calls with a
really hassle-free purchase process.

Skype is already considerably more expensive than a lot of other VOIP
solutions out there - but they succeed much like Apple succeeds, by offering
an easy-to-use product tied to a well-known brand for a price that's fair to
consumers (but far from cheap). They don't need to race to the bottom like
other undifferentiated SIP providers just to get customers.

There's a lot of value in user experience and branding.

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ruslan
When I read that sort of news stating Skype shares 8% of global calling, I
laugh out loud at it. The truth is that 99% of Skype users are freebie users
who don't pay a cent, one of the reason for this is that Skype premium
services are drastically overpriced. Those, who really use VoIP for making
phone calls daily, do prefer Betamax clones, as they are not only lots cheaper
but also give much better voice quality! I believe Betamax makes more in
revenue than Skype can ever dream off, while Betamax is still keeping itself
in shadow. The thing is that one should not be a publicly known and estabished
brand to make big buck. Believe it or not, Betamax and other SIP providers are
killing Skype's business!

A good thing about SIP as open standard is competitiveness and ease of
enterance into the business. There is huge number of small SIP providers all
around the globe which in sum share a very significant amout of paid
international calling traffic, whereas most Skype traffic is still and will be
unpaid.

Another problem with Skype as a company is their huge expenses on running the
business. Their team is overbloated with marketing and PR staff yet they did
not show any progress in marketing for years! They run several headquarters in
Europe where they are doomed to payout very high salaries with all the social
stuff, etc. IMHO, Skype as a business cannot survive without eBay or any other
corporation as big to cover them.

