New high watermark: 19 million concurrent users with Skype dialtone

Guest post by Jean Mercier, the Skype Numerologist

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.

Skype dial tone: 17 million simultaneous online, 23 March 2009.

tags: skype, statistics, stats, trends, simultaneous, online, concurrent, dialtone, charts

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
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Skype dialtone record: 18 million online at the same time

Guest post by Jean Mercier, Skype Numerologist.

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.

tags: skype, stats, charts, trends, statistics, online, dialtone, simultaneous

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Skype's market value over time

By Jean Mercier, Skype Numerologist and regular contributor to Skype Journal.

Wandering over the Internet I found several comments on the value of Skype, for instance here and here.

Interesting to see an analyst predicted a revenue of $786 million (for 2010? I guess this was a typo, and they meant 2009) while I predicted $750 million for 2009 in a private chat with some Skype fanatics some days ago.

Well, lets wait to refine the predictions: eBay will divulge their results Wednesday for the first quarter of 2009!

[EDITED] Added on the graph the weighted average of the Skype Journal Poll based on 68 votes.

tags: skype, statistics, trends, marketcap, value, valuation, ipo, analysts, ebay

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Skype dial tone: 17 million simultaneous online

Guest post by Jean Mercier, the Skype Numerologist

Again a million milestone of concurrent users online today: 17 million at 17h34 GMT (my clock in the screenshot is GMT+1)!!! This is the fifth time since September 2008! This is quite remarkable, because, as mentioned before in this blog, it is also the first time we add more than 5 millions in a September – June period.

Exciting times ahead! And a pity that Skype doesn’t tell us from which countries the growth comes from, although they unveiled a little bit of the picture some weeks ago. They gave much more detailed information in the past, before they were eBay! See for instance this blog post from April 2005: Whose net is it anyway?. First hand information from the CEO himself!

tags: skype, statistics, stats, trends, simultaneous, online, concurrent, dialtone, charts

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

Monday reading

Business

Skype's 2008Q4 contribution falls from Q3, but still profitable. (Jean Mercier)

20% off the Emerging Communications Conference with 'skypejournal' discount code. See you at the SFO Marriott this week.

UK's O2 and Orange oppose Nokia+Skype phones, T-Mobile support them, and Vodafone hasn't said. "if you spend upwards of £40m per year building your brand, you don’t want to be just a dumb pipe do you?" Sounds like hard bargaining to me. (P.S. Wishing/Branding you're not a dumb pipe doesn't make it so.)  (Mobile Today)

AIM for iPhone comes out. AIM Free is ad supported. AIM Paid is... price TBD. Now supporting multiple accounts and free SMS to people in your iPhone contact list. (Ars Technica)

Community in action

Eurojust retracts news release attacking Skype. "NOTE: This is an update of the press release issued on Friday 20 February 2009. Some of the information in this press release was issued prematurely and is therefore incorrect, as there is not yet an official case reported to Eurojust." If only the Sopranos or The Wire were still running. (Government Technology) SJ:Eurojust coordinating anti-Skype project; SJ:Evildoers trust Skype encryption, Cops seek more power

DataPortability.org calls for volunteers to fill a steering committee vacancy. One conference call per week until elections. [disclosure: I'm on the steering committee.]

Twitter Friends and the Influence of Influentials in Word of Mouth Marketing. On research performed by the HP Social Media Lab and explained by BT's JP Rangaswami. (Skillful Minds). Attention to statistics describing social conversation behavior can improve the choice of features in software like Skype.

Future visions

Theme for Supernova 2009 is "Change Networks." Think innovation/value networks but looking at how change propagates. December 1-3 in San Francisco.

Microsoft Office Labs vision 2019. Utopian vision, clutter-free, ten years' out, all feasible, if only for the wealthy. Videos and screenshots. (istartedsomething)

Marriage beginnings and endings

Father (Poland) gives daughter (Texas) away at wedding over Skype. (Killeen Daily Herald)

Ex-Wife Haunts House over Skype. (Ask Bossy column)

16 million simultaneous online

By Jean Mercier, Skype Numerologist, of Belgium.

The fastest million ever.

It is the second time in 3 months that I have to use the same blog post title. Indeed, it took only 21 days or three weeks to add another million.

I made a very wrong prediction in September last year and believe it or not, I am very happy that I was wrong!

This is the first time ever that Skype crosses four times a million milestone in a Northern hemisphere “fall-winter-spring” period, or "School Year"! And, this ten months period is only half way, therefore we could see at least one more million, or perhaps even two! Exciting!

16,159,211 is today's reported peak.

Editor: See also: Jason Harris crediting this to London's snow storm and people working from home. Thanks to Julien Decot, Chaim Haas, and Neil Lindsey for progress reports from San Francisco, New York, and Vancouver.

 

See Skype Journal's alert last Monday (27 January 2009) as we approached 16 million.

Technorati tags: skype, trends, stats, statistics, million, millions, census, population, users, usage, simultaneous, concurrent, online, dialtone

Last quarter 2008 results

By Jean Mercier, Skype Numerologist and regular Skype Journal contributor

Skype revenue growth is flattening. It increased only by 1.2% in $US, and about 3.7% in Euros. In the eBay slides they say “On an fx neutral basis Skype revenue accelerated 5 pts” (fx neutral means “foreign currency neutral basis”). Considering the economic crisis, this isn’t too bad.

I am however surprised about the weak revenue increase, because SkypeOut minutes rose by 18%. And SkypeOut minutes means revenue. If most people were still calling (like I do) on a “per minute” cost, revenue should have risen proportionally. Therefore, this probably means that most people call through a fixed price “calling plan.” Could it be that, from an economical point of view, this is a "too low" margin product?

More spectacular is the growth of the Skype to Skype minutes: this rose by 28%. The economic crisis could have helped to obtain this, because this is completely free, including webcam calling!

One could, however, expect some revenue increase from Skype certified products (headphones, webcams, etc.). Personally I think this is a dying revenue stream because, certified or not, most webcams and headphones and other devices work with Skype! Why should a manufacturer therefore transfer part of its income to Skype?

User accounts continue to show a quite linear growth. I would have expected a stronger growth last quarter, for the same “economy crisis” reason.

Revenue per user account (or should I say username?) shows a decaying tendency. But, as I said in the past, this is a very misleading metric, because it includes all usernames created from the beginning, including “dead” accounts and multiple accounts of one user. Pity that Skype doesn’t publish the number of active accounts!

Next quarter could be better, because I see a quite spectacular increase of concurrent users online, and this will for sure influence indirectly the revenue stream.

15.5 million

by Jean Mercier, Skype Numerologist

Usually i am the first or second to blog about it. Today, two other fanatic Skypers warned me that I should blog. I was aware, but too busy. 15 million concurrent users online today, congratulations Skype and its users!

So, what is exceptional about this? Not that million added of course, not the 84 days it took to reach the 15 million, but it could be that we add another million before the end of June. In that case it will be the first time in Skype history that we cross 4 times a million milestone in one Northern Hemisphere “school year.”

Anyway, Skype shows a quite strong growth the last months!

Motley Fool Discusses The 2012 Annual Report of SkypePal Inc.

The Motley Fool has become a popular and widely respected investment community site since the origins of the commercial Internet in the mid-90's with the objective of helping people take control of their financial lives. It has evolved into a multi-media financial services operation; they have free and premium services; suggest portfolios and try to pick recommendations, host discussion forums amongst other activities. "The company's name was taken from Shakespeare, whose wise fools both instructed, amused, and could speak the truth to the king -- without getting their head cut off."

In a post yesterday about "5 Free Internet Winners" they discuss the five biggest winners if free WiFi comes to pass as a result of anticipated rules for forthcoming spectrum auctions in the U.S. Google, Logitech, Amazon, Nintendo and "eBay | SkypePal" are the selections. Why SkypePal?

Forget eBay.com itself. By the time free access hits the masses, PayPal and perhaps even Skype will be bigger parts of this portfolio of verbs. Heck, even the name eBay may be toast as you crack open the 2012 annual report of SkypePal Incorporated.

Skype and PayPal will be the biggest winners of blanketed coverage. Skype remains the global voice chat leader with 370 million users worldwide. If you don't think that Skype will replace a few landline telephone accounts once connectivity is pervasive, you may as well Skype me to tell me otherwise.

PayPal is already the leader in micro-payments. It will become an even bigger force in real world transactions under Martin's scenario of access for all.

Certainly an opinion contary to all those thinking that eBay is about to run out and sell Skype. And it reinforces my long held opinion that the new executive team has one primary goal - to drive up the value of Skype to the point where eBay can not only fully recover its over $3B total acquisition cost of Skype but also provide a reasonable return, whether as an ongoing operation or through an exit involving a sale or IPO. Motley Fool goes further and feels that Skype will become one of the primary value drivers of eBay shares going forward, given that eBay's online operation is struggling to find new ways to grow.

As for more reliable indicators of Skype's current growth than Skype's published number of accounts (not subscribers, not users), check out the peak number of users daily shown in the Skype client, Jean Mercier's note on the tripling of Skype downloads and Hudson Barton's "Real" User tracking showing that Skype is has returned to a growth rate comparable to its 2006 rate.

But in the background the new executive team has been working on the restructuring discussed in Skype Journal's interview with Skype President Josh Silverman. In a recent "Home Improvement" post, Josh gave an update on the the efforts required to "right the ship":

Excited as we are about bringing new colleagues aboard, there’s more to reorganizing our structure for continued growth. Back in the summer, we set out to be smart about it. And transparent. And fair.

Which is why we held numerous workshops to gain input from the team on how our structure and ways of working need to change. Change that we hope will lead to sustained growth, better products and an even more empowering work life at Skype. One of the things we’re doing is to create smaller “companies” within the company: consumer-, business-, mobility-, and developer-focused business units vaccinated against shackles that curb innovation and risk-taking. Each new business unit is designed to emulate the feel of a start-up and to cultivate a deeper sense of ownership.

This is just a low-resolution snapshot from what’s a continual journey of change. There’s much more to it, of course. Replotting our roles, responsibilities and accountability takes time. While we think that we’ve done most things right, some won’t come through as intended. Tweaking them for a few months should make life at Skype work well for everybody.

And he concludes with:

Our structural rethink isn’t about change for change’s sake. From day one, everything at Skype has boiled down to delighting the customer. With a bit of home improvement to support further growth and innovation, we’re just making sure it stays that way.

At least Motley Fool and the Skype executive team are in sync with respect to the primary goal at Skype. The next few months and the subtle indications of forthcoming new product and service announcements will tell if the foundation is being built to achieve these goals. From restructuring will now come the challenge of execution.

Tags: Motley Fool, eBay, Skype, PayPal, Josh Silverman

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Skype download rate suddenly triples

Guest post by Jean Mercier, Skype Numerologist

Since the first week of November, Skype shows an increased download speed. Previously it fluctuated around 500 downloads per minute. Now: 1400 downloads per minute. Almost triple speed since November 5!

I looked at my other data to see if there are other signs, but they are quite contradictory:

• Concurrent users online shows a very strong growth, and we could even reach 15 million very soon.
• Number of purchase orders doesn't seem to have an increased growth pattern.
• There is since September a downward trend in Skype.com website visits.

I didn’t notice any special Skype "event" that could explain this increase in downloads and active users.

What other reasons could explain the growth?

The economical crisis could be one motivation for people to use the "free calls" from Skype.

Perhaps the "Obama Election campaign" is another explanation of the phenomenon: indeed some "Obama teams" used Skype. See the Skype blogs: US Elections: Skype gets out the vote.

tags: skype, trends, downloads, stats, statistics, chart, growth, november, 2008

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14 million online - The fastest million ever

Skype Numerologist Jean Mercier writes: "We needed only 35 days to go from 13 million concurrent users online to 14 million."

17h55 GMT

Fall-Winter-Summer growth

Jean Mercier is the Skype Numerologist and a regular contributor to Skype Journal.

As usual after a Northern Hemisphere Summer, the growth of Skype users is again visible. Not that there is no growth in summer but

• less people are working,
• more people switch their computers off while they are in the garden, or
• they are traveling and have less access to Internet.

Therefore, fewer users are online at the same time.

Those summers are very visible on the "million milestones" graph that I published last week. In all the past years, excluding the first year, the dots representing the "million milestones" are quite close to each other (see the brown left braces), except when there is a July-August period in the middle (see the red "summer" arrows).

So, what for 2008-2009? I would guess that Skype will as usual add two more "million dots' to its graph before July 2009 (see the Sky(pe) Blue extrapolated dots), going well over the 15 million people online. And I predict also that Skype will reach 16 million concurrent users somewhere around September 2009. But it is only a guess :-)

About growth speed

Each time that I pretend that the growth of Skype isn’t exponential, but linear or even slowing down, fellow blogger Hudson Barton tries to refute it. See his comment on my last post for instance (yes, aaytch, is Hudson himself)!

Perhaps I was a bit too fast and too rude to answer (I apologize for this), because indeed the last 12 months were much better, than the previous 12 months. But anyway, let me analyze the table above, to explain why I still feel I am right. The table shows the top or record concurrent users online at several dates in the past.

The third column is the mean daily (rounded) number of additional concurrent users online at “peak time” for a certain time span. For instance:

• The last two weeks (before September 22), the mean increase was 35000 additional concurrent users online.
• The last year it was 9800 additional concurrent users online.
• And so on.

How do we predict the future? Based on the last two weeks (+35000)? Or on the last 6 months (only +5300!), or on the last year? We can’t predict the future of course, we only can make guesses.

Choosing periods smaller than a year is often wrong for predicting long term growth. Changes in speed in smaller periods can however teach us something about temporary effects (the success of the launch of new Skype features, or the seasonal “Northern Hemisphere summer” effect).

For the long term past growth, we the see that the 2007-2008 season (+9800 users/per day) was very much better than the previous season (+6500). Does this mean that the growth is much faster? Is Hudson right? Could be, but in my opinion, the season 2006-2007 (+6500) was a very bad one compared with the two previous ones (+8300 and +10000), and last year (+9800) was just catching up again.

Only the future will tell, and some signs are very promising: Asterisk, Client version 4.0, Skype for iPhone, perhaps even multiparty videoconferencing, …

tags: skype, trends, stats, statistics, seasonality

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One billion Skype downloads served today

Jean Mercier is the Skype Numerologist and a regular contributor to Skype Journal.

Today is the birthday of my oldest son, 22 years. But also today, at about 9h17 GMT, Skype reached the phenomenal number of 1 billion downloads.

Congratulations Stefan and congratulations Skype !!!

Some comments about this number:

• This means about 2.8 downloads for each registered username
• The current mean download speed is about 500 downloads/minute
• In the past there were short periods where the mean download speed was much higher than 1500 / minute
• The last two years the speed of downloads was mainly linear (see the light blue straight line)
• A download doesn't necessarily mean a "new user", as "old users" also download Skype on "new or other computers" and when Skype releases "new client versions"
• And last but not least, Skype belongs to the top ten most downloaded applications ever.

[EDITED] Hehe, Skype was also very aware of the 1 billion, because Josh Silverman blogged on it also some minutes after reaching that milestone, but I think I was first: I posted at 9h26 GMT, and he posted on 9h35 GMT! ;-)

[Editor: About 6.7 billion people live on Earth, 1.46 billion use the Internet. — Internet World Stats]

tags: skype, trends, statistics, downloads, metrics, stats, performance, measurement

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13 million – congratulations Skype!

Jean Mercier writes the Skype Numerology blog

So another million mark was reached on 15 September 2008: 13 million concurrent Skype users online.

After a very strong start in 2008, where two million-marks were reached in a very short time span, we had to wait 210 days for the next million. [Skype reached 12 million online on 20 February 2008.] This was the third longest period we had to wait for a million mark. This also means there is still a good and steady growth of Skype users, and it also means most of them are satisfied with the services offered.

But the growth isn't exponential anymore. The graph seems to show a small downward bending tendency.

I hope some innovations will cheer us up in the near future: a genuine Skype client for the iPhone for instance!

And perhaps another side comment: until right now, almost nobody blogged about these 13 million. It therefore seems to be a no-event!

tags: skype, trends, statistics, stats

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