future | FutureOfWork

Phil Wolff’s 57 Scurrilous Skype Predictions for 2012

Phil Wolff 3 January 2012 5:20 am

The Future road sign - next exit

Every year I see into Skype’s future, foretelling with unconvincing accuracy, cynicism and hope.

Platform:

SkypeKit licenses open up for servers. Blue Jeans Network already cut a private deal to run Skype on their servers. Skype will open this up widely, with a few strings.

Skype launches SkypeKit hosting. Why set up your own server farm when you can use Skype’s?

More developers come to market with Skype inside. Seven smart TV or over-the-top TV hardware add-ons will announce they come with Skype inside at CES 2012 in January.

Skype introduces its voice user interface API. Taking lessons from Nuance and Siri, Skype defines a command vocabulary for Eesti and 20 other languages so you can dial, answer, and mute calls without using a keyboard, tablet or mouse. No voice-to-IM transcription at launch.

Skype for Cars. A US 4G wireless operator will announce hands-free skyping standard in a partner auto company’s 2013 car dashboard system. Recalled when dead car batteries are blamed on Skype.

Skype Desktop API remains a bastard stepchild, without full access to Skype video and screensharing features.

SkypeKit supports Skype Premium features like Group Video and new presenter/moderator features. Skype reports developer-related revenue for the first time to set a baseline.

Skype’s first Microsoft devcon isn’t Skype-only, piggy-backing on other MSDN events. Skype’s devrels team has to earn independent Microsoft developer cred from scratch.

Skype clients:

Skype for Metro, as Skype for Windows gets a dose of Metro chrome.

Skype for Windows gets chat style formatting features from the Mac. Still no rich-text or html browsing and inline objects.

Skype for Mac gets better. The five most awful things about Skype for Mac will be improved. Slightly.

Skype introduces emoji, the emoticons widely used throughout Japan.

Skype for Kindle Fire 2. As Microsoft allies with Amazon.

Qik ends its life as a brand. Skype will finish migrating popular client features to Skype mobile apps and scaling features/services an order of magnitude or two.

Skype for iOS gets better. Major technical and UI overhauls. Injections of Qik experience. Client will finally load a power user in two seconds, ready to chat and call at least as convenient as FaceTime. Skype’s iPhone and iPad apps will go from useful to delightful.

Microsoft Integration:

Internet Explorer. We’ll see further integration with IE. Click-to-Call will continue to highlight phone numbers, making them clickable. New actions will include adding a Skypable link to your Skype contact list, making Facebook contacts clickable, and enabling Facebook video chat. When IE supports WebRTC/RTCweb, Skype will also support browser-based apps.

Windows. Skype for Windows will ship with the consumer build of Windows 8. Unless the lawyers nix it.

Windows Tablet. Skype for Metro works sooo much better than Skype for iPad.

Sharepoint. Unlikely to see synergy in 2012. Perhaps at the user and department directory level?

XBox. Skype for XBox should be Skype’s best living room app, more intuitive than the apps build for televisions if only because it will support game controllers and Kinect and game designers will know what look and feel will work for gamers. (I might buy an XBox for this, maybe even a TV too. Do I need a TV to use an XBox?) Will Skype build the client? Probably they’ll help the Entertainment Division to build their own. Will the XBox teams open an internal design competition to explore a broad solution space? Here’s hoping.

Microsoft Office bundles Skype. Word, Excel and PowerPoint come with Skype extensions, making phone numbers and Skype names clickable.

Outlook and Exchange start Skype interop without third-party apps. Call a contact from within Outlook. Look up workplace contacts in the enterprise directory.

Skype for Bing advertisers. When you buy ads on Bing, you’ll see an option to make your phone number or Skype name clickable. It may be free, since a raft of up-selling opportunities can follow if advertisers and shoppers further adopt click-and-call behavior.

Windows Live Messenger. Messenger will interop with Skype by year end at least as well as Skype does with Facebook. I expect federated presence, IM, voice and video, though maybe not group video. Messenger-Skype will raise non-trivial identity challenges.

SkyDrive. Skype clients will support file transfer and filing using cloud storage services, starting with Microsoft SkyDrive. Send from or save to SkyDrive with your Skype contacts. It’s a fast and cheap MSFT loyalty feature. Will they follow with integration to Box, Dropbox and other popular services?

Presence. Skype needs dramatically better presence and status messaging. Perhaps Microsoft has a service or five that Skype might use to share availability, user profiles, and mood messages?

Lync. Microsoft’s workplace telephony products will be be folded into the Skype division. Work will start in building the Skype stack into their products. Rebranded as Skype.

Skype’s Performance:

US$1 Billion in sales, broken out in MSFT’s form 10-Q coming Thursday, 19 Jan.

$100 million in advertising, ten percent of Skype’s total income. Driven by a mix of click-to-call from browser plug-ins, Bing-driven links, and in-app brand partner messaging.

Falling termination revenue per user (SkypeOut to phone numbers) even as more people use Skype. Dollars per minute continues to fall to zero, even as cost per mobile MB rises.

Skype Premium service revenue grows as small businesses pay for group video conferencing, choosing Skype’s convenience over GoToMeeting’s features, WebEx’s reliability, and Google’s informality.

35 Million Dialtone: Peak concurrent users will top 35 million.

210 Million Monthly Active Users late in 2012.

More than 1200 people work for Skype. Joining Microsoft just increases the need for engineers, product managers, developer relations and marketing communications staff. Skype’s Palo Alto offices overflow, even after a second buildout.

Skype still doesn’t offer emergency services. Seven people die while someone fails to reach police or an ambulance over Skype.

In Skypelandia in 2012:

Tokbox gets first paying customers for new premium video chat APIs.

Google+ lets you record and save video hangouts to YouTube.

The US Congress discusses voting on bills via Skype in an election year.

Schedule your Google Hangouts in Google Calendar.

Apple squares off against Skype as FaceTime expands to every desktop and mobile device.

Apple adds FaceTime to iChat.

Invite people to a Google Hangout in Gmail. And Orkut.

Amazon partners with a VoIP company to offer scalable hosted cloud telephony like Voxeo or Twilio.

A political candidate holds 40 town halls in one week, attending by Skype video. Four of the gatherings have problems with the connection.

Twilio and Voxeo pilot hosted video chat APIs.

#OccupySkype protests local jobs lost to remote work.

25% of all PBXs shipped in the Americas and Europe come with ViPR features turned on, quietly shifting millions of B2B calls from plain old telephone services to VoIP.

Chinese government agencies deploy stronger surveillance- and censor-ware with the TOM-Online version of Skype.

The US Department of Defense further restricts the use of Skype to non-secure networks and communications.

Cisco buys RIM and folds it into the Flip division.

The Chrome browser for desktops and Android will drive 50 million new Google Voice users.

The Vatican’s broadband chokes when a million people try to call after a rumor spreads the Pope’s Skype name.

Google Voice launches in 10 more countries.

A 50th developer deploys Asterisk as a video conferencing switch.

Police negotiator talks with cornered kidnapper over Skype.

2012 runs a whole day longer than 2011, but feels shorter.

A Skype developer showcases a teledildonics product at the January AVN Conference in Las Vegas.

Microsoft declares company-wide support for NSTIC, forcing Skype to create a 21st Century identity system.

Skype dialtone soars when LinkedIn pilots Skype and SkypeOut links in posts and job ads.

The Slow Startup movement earns counterculture credibility as Lean Startup matures.

Google lets you save video Hangouts to YouTube.

AT&T buys capacity piecemeal after the T-Mobile deal died. Lots of small-company consolidation.

Sprint’s mobile infinite bandwidth offer stops at 4G.

Workplace deskphones lose share to iPad apps and docks with handsets.

Anonymous attacks the Skype network.

Cisco ships a Skype appliance for enterprises.

Five of the ten best selling games come with in-game voice conferencing, serving a Billion minutes of talk in 2012, none of those minutes through Skype.

image_thumb6_thumb_thumbPhil Wolff designs and positions realtime collaboration products for effective people. Phil advises the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium and is a director of the DataPortability Project. Email editor@skypejournal.com, Skype evanwolf, tweet @evanwolf, G+ or call +1-510-444-8234 to talk with Phil. Skype Journal is independent of Skype.

January 3rd, 2012 | Tags: , , , | Category: future, FutureOfWork | 2 comments | Errors?
analysis | events | fun | future | Life | Skype | Skype News

Happy 8th Birthday, Skype! Many happy returns.

Phil Wolff 29 August 2011 10:32 am

imageWow, It’s been eight years since Skype launched. 2003 to 2011. I’ve been writing about Skype on my own blogs or on Skype Journal from the start. SJ alum Jim Courtney salutes Skype today and Skype pats itself on the back.

Looking back…

The company has been bought and sold, and sold, and sold. And soon to be sold again.

The founders were in, kicked out, then held key technology for ransom to get back on the board for their big payout from Microsoft.

Skype averaged a new leader a year.

Skype disrupted international telephone companies, displacing billions of dollars of hard currency with free or very cheap services. Their success has them banned in some countries and declared “an enemy of the state” in others. Didn’t stop them from partnerships with mobile operators from Hong Kong to Italy.

Roughly half the Internet has tried Skype on a personal computer, a mobile phone, or in a device. Skype isn’t ubiquitous but its brand is. And Skype continues to grow.

Why? What does the future hold?

As for why Skype’s been successful…

Skype’s timing was great, several times. Just in time for broadband to make consumer VoIP practical for millions. A few years’ later, just in time for a lift by eBay’s brand (did you know Skype was an eBay company for half its life?), Skype was able to hire GIPS expats and ready itself for the webcam explosion. And when the world economy imploded in 2008, Skype was a large enough network that people turned to video calling as an alternative to travel (airlines hate Skype).

Skype partnered intensely. If you could bring a million new users to Skype, Skype cut a deal. Large national web portals have Skype sub-sites, laptop manufacturers preinstall Skype on Windows, mobile operators install Skype on Android phones, and you can find Skype on TVs and soon on game stations.

Skype focused on customer acquisition. During its eBay years, Skype pursued new users at the expense of product innovation.

Skype gets the viral business. It takes two to talk and Skype made sure you had every reason to drag your friends and family into the network. Skype keeps removing roadblocks to onramping and adding reasons to subscribe. This could be Skype’s first billion dollar year.

Skype delivered real value, consistently, affordably, to millions of people.

So, a few longer-term Skype predictions:

In 2011:

Microsoft will close the deal.

Skype will have more than 1000 employees.

Luxembourg will become Skype’s HQ in name only. Palo Alto is the new Luxembourg.

Microsoft Watch starts covering Skype closely.

In 2012:

Microsoft’s Skype division will absorb the Lync business unit.

Lync will be rebranded Skype.

Skype will launch its cloud products.

Skype will hit its Q1 peak of 35 million concurrent users, 220 million active users.

Victims sue Skype for not offering emergency dialing after a family dies.

Skype’s new cloud loses the US Presidential campaigns to Twilio, powering team and phonebanking apps.

A Skype toolbar and skinny-client comes with a new release of Internet Explorer.

Skype fuels LinkedIn chat.

Hackers reverse engineer Skype’s p2p network, make it public. Vulnerabilities and prior hacks exposed.

In 2013:

Skype for Mac catches up with Skype for Windows.

Skype for Windows Phone has cooler features than Skype for Mac.

Skype ships on the next Windows, in the next Office.

Skype becomes just one of thousands of products using in-browser WebRTC for calls, presence and IM.

SkypeKit becomes a standard component of Windows.

Skype kills the former Lync product family as PSTN hardware sales drop sharply. Lync becomes a Sharepoint feature, phone stations are all mobile, tablet or PCs.

Skype works with with Windows Live Messenger IM and voice.

In 2014:

Skype will generate one quarter of its revenue through Microsoft internal customers. Bing ads, Xbox subscriptions, Office, Windows.

Leaks reveal Skype cooperated with law enforcement in a totalitarian regime to shut down resistance. Leaks prove false.

Facebook drops Skype as a partner, as their internal pendulum swings to owning.

The Vatican IT department picks Skype as its telecom standard.

Skype for Layar brings talk to augmented reality RayBans.

In 2015:

Skype will deliver one billion minutes of live talk through developers using its cloud platform services.

Skype will generate one quarter of its revenue from platform services.

Skype and Bing launch YouTube competitor.

Skype is banned on student tablets in 903 school districts as a distraction.

Half of all televisions come with Skype inside or in an attached box.

Mass exodus as pre-Microsoft Skype employees fully vest and leave.

In 2016:

Phone banks using Skype for Web prove decisive in Get Out The Vote campaigns.

Facial recognition plug-ins reveal micro expressions and give live commentary.

Stallone Skype’s fighting instructions to his son in Rocky Junior.

In 2017

Platform products deliver half of Skype’s revenue.

Tony Bates named as Ballmer’s successor.

 

Photo credit: 8th Birthday Cake by Jim Capaldi for Emily’s 8th Birthday Party.

Thanks for all the Skype.

August 29th, 2011 | Tags: , | Category: analysis, events, fun, future, Life, Skype, Skype News | 4 comments | Errors?
analysis | future | Technology

The iPad is a mere blip

Phil Wolff 20 April 2011 6:22 am

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The iPad doesn’t work for me, he said. Neither fish nor fowl. Why all the fuss?

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I think it is the difference people felt when they left the command lines of Unix, DOS, and CP/M for the first Macintosh in 1984. It had a mouse. You could grab and drop things. The sense of direct manipulation completely altered how you thought of what it meant to use, to own, a computer, to design and code software.

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The seamless touch experience is transformative on the iPhone and even more so when you get an order of magnitude more physical space for your fingers, hands, and wrists to express your interests and intent, for your eyes to travel and move around the spaces and deeper into the detailed crannies of those spaces. There is a palpable immediacy and sense of control.

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Moore’s Law and the like predict in a few years the iPads will quadruple their pixel depth, have multi-day battery life, power to spare for leaner accessories, user-facing HD cameras, perhaps even 3D cameras, quad speakers, noise cancelling stereophonic microphones, new pressure/touch/gesture sensors, new environmental sensors, 4G radio service, and faster USB connectors. The apps you’ll be able to run to exploit those hardware features won’t be available on Windows or Android PCs for three years. I have a very hard time imagining any of the other operating systems catching up let alone thriving without subsidy.

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In 1911, only the earliest adopters had telephones and cars or had flown in an airplane. Fifty years later, everyone did. By the late 1960s only James Bond, researchers and large organizations had computers, television studios, TV or radio transmission systems, and car phones. Now we have all that and more.

What technologies are rarified today? What is expensive, hard to do, hard to get now? Moore’s Law and improved technology diffusion are at work as we speak.

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Biochemistry costs are falling like crazy while prerequisites for use fall from research postdocs to clinical lab techs and assembly lines. Pocket genomics. In a decade or so. For the poor.

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Molecular manufacturing, building things up a few molecules at a time, is increasing in complexity, scope and richness. Costs are dropping, production times are speeding up, quality is improving. As fast as the materials science is growing, so is the software for design, control, and distribution. Same for 3D printing. Between the two, we’ll see home fabs capable of making new electronics, consumer goods, even textiles. The first ones come in a decade, then widespread in two. Print those new earbuds, coffee mug, and belt buckle whose designs you bought on Amazon and Cafe Press.

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Huge internet companies operate compute, communications, and storage data farms today. We are lucky to rent them while their prices fall and capacity continues to grow without apparent limit. Watch the pendulum swing as home storage falls to $100 per petabyte by the end of the decade, just in time for 3D games, IMAX movies and Skype at 2304p (4096 x 3072 pixels). That’s when parcel delivery will force ISPs to up their game.

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Meanwhile we’ll be facing newly massive constraints due to global overpopulation, drinking water shortages (Dallas is almost out of water), food shortages, energy shortages, key mineral shortages, drug resistant epidemics, and the age gaps (some countries like the USA where pensioners outnumber youth four to one while in others like Iran the youth outnumber pensioners at the same rate). There is no technology utopia. 3D printing and nanotech could disrupt markets for cotton in Egypt, for example, as goods are manufactured hyperlocally.

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So when folks say that they don’t need a new technology, that’s OK. It may not be right for them at this moment. It might never be right. But technology is a living ecosystem, with evolutionary imperatives and no guarantees that any given product or technology thrives in any given place. Sometimes you bet in Darwin’s lottery just to help shape your future.

So, on which aisle might I find Mr. Fusion?

See also: Quora: What novels take place in an apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic setting?

April 20th, 2011 | Category: analysis, future, Technology | One comment | Errors?
7 years and 12 days since Skype Journal launched as a stand-alone blog.

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