Skype generates $97 what per person? Sales? Gross margin? Net profit?
Microsoft buys Skype
- Thread starter Arwin
- Start date
Skype generates $97 what per person? Sales? Gross margin? Net profit?
Damn. 10x EBITA is a lot. 10x Turnover is just nuts.
I can only assume that Ballmer's promises of continued support of all platforms has a couple major asterisks in it. I predict Skype video slow to never on Android/webOS now and upgrades to the Skype video for iOS to lag WP7 by at least a year. If MS didn't buy it for a competitive advantage in the phone/tablet marketplace then the only other possibility is that it will no longer be free. The really sucky part of that is we're going to have multiple, nominally proprietary voip/video-oip products and no standards or interoperability for some time to come. Google voice, Apple Facetime, Fring, MS-Skype, etc.
Time to port Ekiga to Windows, Android, OSX, webOS and iOS imho.
Ike Turner
Veteran
BTW.. As part of this deal, Qik is now owned by Microsoft (Skype aqcuired Qik in January...).
The biggest potential is for Windows Mobile users, IMO.
I pay around 10 cents/minute for domestic calls. With my current dataplan I can skype at less than 1 cent/minute, world wide too. If Microsoft (and Nokia) can make Skype ubiquitous they can get a chunk of normal telco revenue.
Cheers
I pay around 10 cents/minute for domestic calls. With my current dataplan I can skype at less than 1 cent/minute, world wide too. If Microsoft (and Nokia) can make Skype ubiquitous they can get a chunk of normal telco revenue.
Cheers
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Flawed statement.
10x EBITA may be very low depending on what you are buying. It all depends on risk!
For example, hydropower dams can easily sell for 15-20x ebita because everything is sunk cost, extremely low risk and high profit margins and you need like 2 guys to turn some nuts and bolts to operate it.
10x Turnover does not need to be nuts depending on the future prospects of skype, and possible synergies it may give microsoft and the strategic value of preventing google\somebody else to buy it.
But yes i agree that its probably too steep. (i just wanted to point out that you cannot really say if 10x ebitda or turnover is high or low in general - needs to be adjusted for the riskiness of the cashflow)
If the telco's start losing revenues because their dataplans sees people using free Skype instead instead of their high-cost direct-phone tarrifs, surely they'll change their schemes so using Skype is no longer in the phone user's best interests?
For me, phone calls are stupidly expensive on the landline thanks to limit bundle deals for non-cable homes in the UK. Would theoretically be convenient to use our uncapped broadband BB bandwidth to make calls, but without a phone-type system where you can just call someone and have a little handset respond, it just won't prove popular enough with Joe Public. Tesco's tried such a system with free calls between owners of their Tesco phone, but it's not like everyone rushed out to buy new phones to get free calls.
Sadly, I can only see this acquisition as a negative step, unless MS maintain open-platform with Skype and don't gimp service on rival systems, which would be very unlike MS. There has always been the MS way in direct competition with all the other ways, and I can't forsee MS being a platform agnostic service provider unless they are having a sea change. As is, dreams of Skype on PSN seem dead now. I'm not sure Skype on XB360 brings much to the table when MS have already had the excellent Live Messenger integration on PC and console. I've read that Skype is far more widespread in the US, whereas MS Messenger is more popular in Europe, so I'm left thinking this is just a buyout of the US comms space. People will no doubt be encouraged to buy Windows phones and Windows tablets in order to use their preferred free VOIP services which MS own.
If we're honest, what we really need here is an open standard, which is what telephones provided. Doesn't matter which carrier you are with, you can still call any number in the world. Fragmented VOIP services mean the market is segregated into Live users, Skype users, iOS users, who can't call each other - the very opposite of the modern international social networks. We need a system where you pick the software interface that works for all users.
Skype does work with the phone network. I have two Skype-In numbers, one with a San Francisco area code and the other with a Washington DC area code. Each costs $50 a year. When people call me, I pick it up over here in Europe. There's no charge to me or the caller (provided that he's local). When I make the call, then it's about 2 cents a minute to any US number. I use a USB handset hooked up to my desktop computer. They also sell standalone Wi-Fi handset. When I'm not there to take the call (or the computer is off), it gets routed to my mobile phone. It works pretty well.
Who are you comparing Microsoft to in your "...the MS way...all other ways..."? Oracle? Apple? Sony? Google?
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/ne...-buy-skype-for-7bn-rest-of-world-for-real.arsRead whatever it was that you read...again...because clearly you are only referring to one set of "owners" and not the other company that retained a 35% stake.The 2009 sale valued Skype at 2.75B at least use that number for your remarks.
sorry I didnt see it wasnt the whole company that was sold for $1.9 billion.
yove gotta agree though whoever negotiated the $8.5billion price to buy was a terrible businessperson
the market certainly saw it as a bad deal
http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:MSFT
bang, not only did they spend 8.5billion but also managed to wipe billions off the value of the company as well
Oh, I know it works, but only if you and the people you phone have a Skype phone. There's no point me buying a Skype phone if no-one I'm going to call has one, and there's no point them buying one if no-one has one to call them on. So in such a catch 22, it's a dead-end here, short of a big agreement for someone to buy a job lot and distribute them.
What I mean is Microsoft's platforms and service have historically been MS exclusive. Choosing the MS format would always lock you into the MS OS. Like all those unique IE extensions that meant web pages designed to work on the 70+% of Windows users messed up on non-Windows machines. Similarly Silverlight only works on MS OSes (okay, OSX according to Wiki), whereas Flash runs on everything including Linux. MS wants people to use Silverlight as it's better than Flash, but it also has limited distribution too. If everything went the way MS wanted, everyone would ditch Flash, user Silverlight, and every web-browsing device would have to license MS's software while they could control which platforms (Linux) would be excluded from internet content. This is one way MS helps push their OS, so it's understandable. And other companies do similar, such as Sony developing proprietary storage formats. Only they've had to give up on that, and these days they same more interested in spearheading open standards. MS as a software giant are always challenging every software fashion that appears with their own version.
So what likelihood is there of PSN or NinendoNET getting Skype support? Will Linux and Android still get Skype content, or will MS push Windows in all its flavours as the ideal network and squeeze out these other platforms? I don't see the business sense in buying Skype if MS aren't going to leverage customers onto Windows, unless they intend to monetise it more aggressively.
You can phone anyone from Skype. And be phoned by anyone. There's no need for Skype phones all over the place. Having a Skype phone simply means you get the call for free.
Not only can you call land lines and mobiles, but they also have local stations in contries, so when I'm phoning UK from Canada via Skype I am paying for a UK call rate (rather than international) plus the relatively small charge for Skype (IIRC).
No, you can make calls to any phone number in supported countries through Skype-Out and receive calls from any ordinary phone through Skype-In. Even Caller-ID works.
If I contact another Skype member, then it's free. But the service is cheap enough that I don't bother. I don't make many outward calls so I do pay-by-the-minute. If you do, you can get the unlimited plan. It's only 6 € a month (or 50 € a year) for calls to any land-line phone in Europe.
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