More people Skype in Chinese than in English. One of eBay's justifications for buying Skype was help entering China's consumer-to-consumer ecommerce. Now rumors: eBay will sell its Chinese operations to Skype partner Tom.com. Or to Skype rival Tencent, maker of QQ. Or eBay buying Tencent. eBay doesn't comment on rumors.

QQ broke 20 million simultaneous users in June 2006, compared to Skype's 7 million. They have 549 million accounts (vs. Skype's 130), 224 million active IM accounts. And nearly all of QQ's users read Chinese and speak at least one Chinese language. Compared to Skype's language diversity this means QQ is comparatively ubiquitous in China.

A Tencent-Skype merger could work, at least on paper. This would blend Skype's technology, QQ's userbase, and Tencent's enterprise RTX and Tencent Messenger workplace messaging. Aside from the vital soft stuff like cultural-fit, the businesses and products might match up.  Who else might rapidly build Skype's markets and capabilities? More M&A consolidation to come? What does Skype need? How would you define critical mass and market dominance in 2008?