Skype

Today in London, Nokia unveiled its first smartphones on Windows Phone (Mango) platform - Lumia 710 and Lumia 800. In general, they haven't disappointed anyone. Stylish, high quality, fast and reliable smartphones with pre-installed Mobile Office and Outlook, integrated to Exchange, SkyDrive, SharePoint, Office 365 - will surely attract business users. Of course, the price $580 (Lumia 800) - is not much different from the iPhone, but otherwise it has all chances to compete with iPhone and Android-devices. The only big cons - is that Nokia Lumia has no front camera, which means it doesn't support video chat, so important for business users. Why wasn't it installed? Nokia representative said that they simply had not enough time. But this is not the most shocking news about the video chat on Windows Phone.

Skype is making the second attempt to create the developer ecosystem around its service. The first attempt - Skype Extras - left an unpleasant aftertaste for developers. In 2009, after Skype was sold, the company unexpectedly announced that the Skype Extras catalog will be closed. Nevertheless the Extras where accessible in the Skype client until now, but users couldn't buy them using Skype credits. The new app directory is called Skype Apps and it replaces Extras in the Skype's Tools menu. But you also can't buy the applications in Skype Apps using Skype-credits. You have to go to the third-party site and order each application separately. The Skype Apps includes the special section for business apps. Basically there are apps for Call-Centers, call recording, screen-sharing, faxing and integration with other systems.

Mobile group-messaging services hit the social Web this year. Basically they are designed for communication and interaction with friends and family, but (as we know) such social technologies are rapidly find their way into Enterprise. One of such services GroupMe was yesterday bought by Skype for as much as $80 million. GroupMe allows to create a group and send text messages, photos to its members, start conference calls and share your location. For example, you send a message and all group members instantly receive it. Or you can call all them at once. Such a service could be useful for mobile work-groups, which need real-time communications. For example, equipment service companies.

Last March, before Skype was acquired by Microsoft, it announced that the GoToMeating web-conferencing tools will be integrated into Skype's client. It could be a logical partnership because GoToMeeting and Skype are often used together to organize online meetings. But then Microsoft bought Skype, and apparently the plan was changed. After all, Microsoft and Citrix (the owner of GoToMeeting) - are more rivals than friends. Anyway, yesterday GoToMeeting launched the new version with its own video tool called HDFaces. Moreover, HDFaces can not just replace Skype for GoToMeeting users, but also compete with Skype in the global enterprise video meating market.

After Microsoft's Skype acquisition we started looking for its replacement as of public communication service. And, apparently, not only we, but also the investors who want to raise money on this project. From now one of the main contenders for the Skype's place - is Tango. It has just closed $42 million in its Series B round of funding led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, notably the first outside investors in Skype. Tango launched 18 months ago and already has 18 million users. Every 2 weeks it adds a million. Until now, Tango was a mobile service. It allowed to make video calls on iPhone, iPad and Android (smartphones and tablets). But now it introduced the Windows app, and soon plans to create the Mac-client. So how is Tango different from Skype?

A couple of years ago, the IT world was excited with the idea of using Skype as a service - when any application, web-service, mobile client and any device could "talk" via Skype's network. This dream in theory came true last year when the SkypeKit SDK was launched in the closed beta. However, during the whole year SkypeKit SDK was actually used only by the couple of TV manufacturers and (perhaps) for Facebook integration. Earlier this month SkypeKit SDK was opened to all comers, but we still haven't seen any boom of new Skype-applications. And this time noone can blame Microsoft.

A great battle between Google and Skype (Microsoft) for the video calling market continues on a new platform - the Social Web. Last week Google launched (in Beta) their social network Google + and one of it's features is the group video chat Hangouts. And yesterday the built-in Skype-based video chat appeared in Facebook. Both video chat apps work directly in browser, which signals about the transition of video calling applications to web-technologies (although both apps require the installation of a small browser plug-in).

Just yesterday we talked about the fact that Microsoft's Skype will soon launch video chat on the competing iPad platform, and today it has launched video chat on another competing platform - Android. Though, right now it works only on the few Android smartphone models: Nexus S, HTC desire S, Sony Ericsson Xperia neo and Sony Ericsson Xperia pro. The reason is that there are a lot of specifications for Android-devices and Skype just had not enough time to cover them all. Video works over 3G and Wi-Fi (as in the Skype for iPhone). You can switch between the front and back cameras and make video calls from Android to Skype for iPhone, Mac and Windows clients (or receive calls from them). And the customers of U.S. cable provider Comcast will soon have another option - calling from smartphone to TV and back. The other day Comcast demonstrated how it will look like:

Fring was one of the first who released a special messenger for the iPad when it appeared in 2010 and even tried to get people calling via iPad, as via the usual phone. And now Fring one of the first releasing the video chat for iPad 2, and at once with the group video support (fo 4 participants). The application provides the optimized picture quality, works over Wi-Fi and 3G, and can switch between the front and back cameras, but for now can't make SIP calls to regular phones. Also, recently the video showing Skype's video chat working on the iPad has leaked to the Web (see below). Unlike Fring, this application is still under development. But it's a good sign that after the acquisition by Microsoft, Skype continues to develop its apps for the competing (Apple) platforms.

Today Digium (the developer of the open-source PBX-platform Asterisk) has notified its customers that the sales of its product Skype for Asterisk will be terminated since July 26. Recall, Skype and Digium released this Skype for Asterisk connector back in 2009. It allows companies that use Asterisk-based PBX-systems to integrate them with the Skype network and make / receive Skype-calls using the regular office phones. But the new Skype's owner Microsoft, of course, has no particular desire to support the free Asterisk, that competes with its own product Lync (MS Communications Server). So Microsoft decided not to prolong the contract with Digium. Digium assured that existing Skype for Asterisk users will be able to use their Skype-channels during two more years.

Sold out to Microsoft, Skype on the one hand secured itself the bright future in the stable Microsoft empire, and on the other hand - killed its bright future as a global public communications service. No one ever will look at Skype, as at the independent service that suits everyone and works everywhere. This niche is now empty and someone has to take it. Besides, we expect that in the near future the communication services, owned by Microsoft rivals, will also make the considerable steps forward in order to keep the balance of power. Here are 5 products that (we think) will compete with Microsoft Skype:

Last week, Skype again postponed its IPO. Then appeared the rumors that Facebook and Google are in talks to buy Skype. But today, suddenly Microsoft has acquired Skype for the record sum - $ 8.5 billion. With all respect to Skype - this is a very big sum. After all, Skype annual revenue is less than $1 billion and the net income is about $260 million. However, there are several reasons for Microsoft to overpay for this world's most popular messenger:

Earlier this year, we forecast the active competition between Skype and Google for the mobile video chat market. And the companies justify our expectations. Yesterday Google launched the (wireless) update of Android-smartphones, that adds voice and video chat to mobile Google Talk. At first Nexus S models will be updated, then all other devices running Android 2.3 and higher. Built-in video chat on Android will work via Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G networks, and will allow to call from a smartphone to GMail and back. Recall that the operating system for tablets Android Honeycomb already has in-built video chat. Meanwhile, Skype is already ahead of its competitor - it already offers video chat for Android and iPhone, and even lets you make video calls between these devices.

Ok, now it becomes clear why the Skype's latest version got the home page - it will be used to run banner ads. It's pretty fair advertising scheme, especially taking into account that earlier Skype executives intended to display banners right in the video call window (during the free calls). Meanwhile the ads will be showing only in the US, UK and Germany. Of course, it will be interesting to see how Skype will solve the targeting problem. Because the effectiveness of online advertising is achieved by matching ads to user interests. At the moment, Skype actually knows about users only their location, gender and age. At this point the recent partnership of Skype with Facebook could be very useful as this social network has a lot of user information. Perhaps these giants will integrate their ad networks.

Recently Skype is intending to increase profits by expanding its business services. Skype already offers to business the VoIP service, IP-PBX integration and group video conferencing. And it would be very logical to add web-conferencing to this list, because many Skype partners (like Yuuguu, Yugma, Mikogo) are already earning on it. As known Skype almost 2 years ago added the screen-sharing feature. But it would be a shame to charge money for it. Firstly, it is the very basic implementation of screen-sharing without application selection, screen annotations, granting mouse control... Second, Skype's screen-sharing only works in one-to-one sessions and doesn't work simultaneously with video calling. So, finally, Skype has decided to pump-up and sell this feature and surprised everyone by announcing the partnership with Citrix GoToMeeting.

Skype actively starts this year. Just a few days after the launch of the iPhone version with video chat, the company has announced about two other important news. First of all, Skype has acquired (for $ 150 million) the competitor Qik - the mobile video chat and video mail service for Android smartphones. So, apparently, Skype for Android with video chat is coming soon. Secondly, Skype has introduced paid Premium subscription, the main feature of which is a group videoconferencing for up to 10 people. It costs $8.99/month or $4.99 for a day pass. This means that there is no more free group video calls. Group video conferencing is also available in the Skype business version and also costs $ 8.99/month. Note that only the user that initiates video call needs to pay. Mobile Skype users can also participate in group video conferencing, but without the video.

This year we expect the great battle between Google and Skype for the mobile video chat market. Skype has made the first move - added the ability to make video calls to its mobile client Skype for iPhone. Unlike the iOS native video chat app Facetime (that works only on the iPhone 4), Skype video chat is available on iPhone 3G, iPad and iPod Touch. Video calls can be made over Wi-Fi and 3G. You can call from your smartphone to computer and vice versa. But the group video calls are not supported yet. Recall that in May 2010, Skype added video chat to Nokia N900. Besides, Skype's reps promised to release Android video-enabled app before the end of 2010, but (for unknown reasons) first video has been added to iPhone app first. For now video calls on the iPhone also provided by fring, Qik, Tango and Yahoo Messenger.

We all have become used to the fact that Skype - is  a program that is installed on computer. But perhaps, soon this fact will become a part of history. Different sources report that in the first quarter of the next year, Skype will release the web version. This is logical because Skype must respond somehow to the success of Google Voice, which works in the browser. True, like Google Voice, the web-version of Skype will use a proprietary browser plug-in, which still needs to be installed on your computer. Skype also needs the web-version for better integration in social networks. As we already reported, Skype plans to implement the second phase of Facebook integration and put "Call me" button on every Facebook user profile. Of course, it will be more convenient for users if they can make video calls via Facebook without launching another application.

The new version Skype 5.0 for Windows is already available for download. It contains two super-features - Facebook integration and group videochat for 10 participants. Specifically for Facebook integration the Skype interface has been revamped - homepage with contact's status log and tabs has appeared. You can add Facebook as one of these tabs. It will display a list of all your Facebook-friends and you can click-to-call them via free videochat (if they have skype in Facebook contacts) or via SkypeOut. In addition, you can switch to the News Feed view and add posts and comments to Facebook right from your Skype. Unfortunately, Skype does not allow to communicate through Facebook-chat. What will be the result of combining half-billion Facebook user-base with the half-billion Skype user-base - we can only guess.

(Tony Bates, the new Skype CEO)
Recently, we wrote that Cisco could buy Skype. These rumors appeared since it was found out that Skype and Cisco are conducting negotiations. But probably, it was not Cisco trying to buy Skype, but Skype owners trying to get Cisco's top manager Tony Bates to become Skype's exec. Today, Tony Bates, who was a senior Enterprise VP at Cisco, replaced Josh Silverman as Skype CEO. Most likely, this means that Skype will not be sold to Cisco or any other company and go to IPO to become a public company. (If Cisco was going to buy Skype, it would be logical to appoint CEO after the acquisition). Additionally, this means that Skype's new priority will be the enterprise market, that Bates perfectly knows. That is where the Skype owners are going to make money.

Recently we reported that Cisco may acquire Skype. However, judging by the recent announcements, this won't happen, and Skype has more ambitious plans than becoming Cisco's satellite. Today, Skype announced partnership with Cisco's main competitor - Avaya. We expected this a year ago, when Skype was sold to a group of investors led by Silver Lake - co-owners of Avaya. As a result of the partnership Skype Connect (formerly Skype for SIP), the service that allows PBX systems use the Skype's network, is already integrated in the Avaya solutions. I.e. Avaya will push it to its clients (perhaps for a certain fee). The next year the company plans to fully integrate Skype tools (video, conference, messenger, status) with its Unified Communications. However, this does not mean that Skype will turn against Cisco. Last year Skype and Cisco also implemented the same integration.

Several more or less reliable sources reported that Cisco is going to buy Skype before the company complete the IPO process. If this is true, then Cisco will strenthen its leadership on the video and unified communications markets. This acquisition will also mean the synergy of corporate and consumer communications (which is beneficial for both companies and their customers). Moreover, the protocol of these communications - will be closed, which perfectly fits Cisco's strategy and will protect its monopoly. On the other hand, the current Skype co-owners (Silver Lake) are also co-owners of Avaya - the main Cisco's competitor on the unified communications market. And they are not interested in creating such a monster as Cisco Skype. But the supposed price tag - $ 5 billion - can be a very strong argument. Recall that two years ago Google was also going to buy Skype, but antitrust concerns may have persuaded them not to make an actual offer.

Today Skype has filed an IPO registration statement and plans to raise up to $100 million in an initial public offering. Along with the IPO application Skype has published some of the their business stats and plan of its further development. It turnes out that the company is doing quite well. During the first 6 months in 2010 Skype has earned $406 million, that is approximately 25% higher the previous year. Nevertheless, taking into account that the Skype has already more than 560 million registered users (it's more than Facebook), the company's management wants to earn at least ten times more. In addition, they are worried that almost 90% of Skipe's income comes from a single service - SkypeOut. Therefore, the major objective of attracting new investments is the development of new paid of business applications.

Skype, probably in order to recover its reputation after the incident with Fring, decided to do some good thing. This thing is a new version of Skype for iPhone. First, the new client (which works on the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS) supports multitasking mode, and thus is able to work in the background. Now, if you wait for an incoming Skype call, you do not need to keep the application open all the time. Now with an incoming call you’ll see a prompt, like the one above. You can also open other applications while calling over Skype. And most importantly, Skype decided to drop the idea to take an additional charge for calls over 3G (due to “some operators starting to move to tiered pricing models”). But, unfortunately, nobody in Skype mentioned when the video calls support are coming to Skype for iPhone.

As we have stated, mobile video calls are becoming the next big thing, and it seems, that Fring - is too small company to compete with such giants as Skype, Google and Apple in this market. Last week, Fring enabled making video calls on 3G for iPhone users. This new feature has become so popular that within a few hours after launch, Fring servers couldn't stand to load and Fring decided to temporarily disable support for Fring-to-Skype calls. In a few days Fring expanded its capacity, but Skype support has not been resumed. Today Fring blog has reported that Skype has blocked these calls and threatened to sue Fring. Quote from the blog: "They are afraid of open mobile communication. Cowards".

As Skype CEO, Jonathan Christensen, promised last year, this world's most popular communication service is now available for developers as a "pure" service. Yesterday SkypeKit SDK was released. It allows any software and device to use the Skype network for instant messaging, status control, audio and video chat without the need to install the proprietary client. SkypeKit supports Windows, Linux and Mac. It includes the Skype's "VoIP heart" - Silk codec, which was opened for developers a year ago. However, the bad news is that SkypeKit can't be used by web-applications and mobile applications.

A couple of weeks ago we suggested that Google is going to shift the video communications market (and win Skype), betting on mobile video calls. Today we can accurately say that very soon mobile video chat will become a huge market and the IT giants will fight for it. It's enough to watch the Facetime (iPhone 4 video chat) presentation to understand this. Since June 24 Apple will start selling iPhone 4 with the front camera and video over Wi-Fi in US, and it's obvious that to the and of this year millions of users will make video calls via the iPhone, and Apple will become the world's largest mobile video chat provider. But it will be only the short term win. Then Skype, Google and other players will join the fight.

Video chat in GTalk (or more exactly, in GMail) has appeared more than a year ago. And we were confident that Skype will get the very strong competitor. Nevertheless, Skype's market share hasn't suffered at all. Even GMail users mainly continue using Skype for video calls. Probably, it's a question of a habit and Skype's great popularity. And perhaps, when Google adds calls to regular phones with the help of acquired Gizmo5 - this won't also change anything. Without offering some new revolutionary features, pushing Skype from the market will be extremely difficult. Especially now, when Skype introduced group video calling. However, it seems Google has a new idea. Today the company announced the acquisition of Swedish developer of VoIP and videoconferencing solutions - GIPS. GIPS technologies are used in Yahoo Messenger, Cisco WebEx and Lotus Sametime. And in addition, GIPS has created the best engine for video chat on Android.

Today Skype has rolled out the new beta version for Windows which supports group video calls for up to 5 people. Skype 5.0 beta is now available for download and testing, but with the warning that it may contain a lot of bugs. Despite the fact that the first official screenshot of Skype group video chat shows a boy and a grandmother, it's likely that most of its users will be business employees. Because as soon as the testing finished, the group video chat will become a paid feature. At the same time, there already some free group video chat solutions (for friends and families) on the market, for example, TinyChat, TokBox, PalBee. On the small business market there are also some strong players with paid solutions - ooVoo, SightSpeed and HP SkyRoom. However, everything will depend on the cost and quality, offered by Skype.

As you know, recently the U.S. operator AT&T allowed VoIP applications on iPhone to work over its 3G network. But the 3G version of Skype for the iPhone has not appeared  yet. Today it became clear why. On the Mobile Congress in Barcelona Skype with Verizon presented there joint project. Specially for Verizon Skype developed mobile clients for some Blackberry smartphones, and Android smartphones by Motorola and HTC (still Skype worked only on Windows Mobile, iPhone and Nokia Maemo. Yesterday Symbian was added to this list). These devices (with preinstalled Skype) will let Verizon customers to make free Skype-to-Skype calls over 3G, chat and monitor the online status of their contacts. It also allows to make calls through SkypeOut - but only abroad (local US calls will be banned).

First of all, 2010 will be the year when Microsoft becomes a strong Enterprise 2.0 market player. This year Microsoft will launch the commercial versions of online MS Office, Sharepoint 2010 with web 2.0 features and Windows Azure cloud platform, and these products will of course push ahead SaaS and enterprise Social Software technologies. Besides, we expect revolutions in mobile enterprise technologies and VoIP sphere.

Multiple sources (including TechCrunch) say that almost exactly Google has bought  Gizmo5 for $30 millions. If it's true, Skype now will get the very powerful competitor. Interesting, that month ago Skype was going to buy Gizmo5 itself in order to replace the Global Index technology (that was a reason of lawsuit) with Gizmo5 SIP-based platform. But now when Skype has after the Skype settlement, though, Gizmo5’s strategic value to Skype sort of plummeted. But, it turns out, that Gizmo5 has the strategis value to Google. And, really, it ideally fits Google's communication plans. First of all, GTalk can call only between internet users, but can't call PSTN and mobile phones. Gizmo5 will easily provide this opportunity to GTalk users.

Recently all Skype news are about commercial wars and not about the new useful features. Nevertheless, its popularity grows day by day. According to  exo.performance.network, Skype is not only the most popular VoIP service, but also the most widely used IM client (at least on Windows PCs). After chipping away at Microsoft's lead for weeks, Skype finally surpassed the MSN Messenger. And while Microsoft Messenger is pre-installed on large number of PCs, Skype requires that the user make a conscious choice to seek out and install the program..

Skype, that is struggling now against Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, has  two backup plans. The first - is to rebuild the back end themselves, and the second - is to acquire some existing technology. It turn out, that Skype moves in both directions. The company is hiring VoIP experts (like crazy) for their internal project, named Gecko. But this project is probably not progressing as quickly as Skype needs it to. Today multiple sources announced that Skype is in negotiations to acquire its little rival Gizmo5, that uses open protocols SIP and Jabber in its p2p VoIP network. The price tag is said to be in the $50 million range.

After the bad news for third-party developers, Skype exec Jonathan Christensen  hastened to make some remarks and give us a hope for a bright future. First, all plugins will work even after Extras close. Only users will not be able to pay for them from their Skype-accounts. But the developers will be still able to collect payment through other payment systems. Second, Skype is not going to kill the developer community and will soon introduce the next generation platform for them. And the most interesting part, is that talking to Michael Arrington (TechCrunch), Christensen noted that third-party developers will be able to create new solutions on the top of Skype services. What does it mean?

It seems that the new Skype owners prefer a shock therapy. Today they decided to close Skype Extras - add-on applications created by third-party developers. Today there are few hundreds of these add-ons in the catalog, and among them Pamela (for call recording), Skylook (plug-in for Outlook), Yugma (web-conferencing) and others. For some developers it was a primary business model. The official reason is that not enough customers where using and paying for these extras, so it's not profitable for company to support this ecosystem.

Skype and Digium (Asterisk developers) announced the official release of the Skype for Asterisk connector. This solutions allows to integrate Asterisk IP PBX or Asterisk based telephony systems with Skype network:
- make calls to Skype-users from the common office phones or ip-phones
- make calls from office phones to PSTN and mobile lines all over the world at SkypeOut rates
- receive Skype-calls to single corporate Skype account (or SkypeIn number) and redirect them to office phones
- in the same way receive calls from your site (with the help of CallMe button)
- set IVR menu to your corporate Skype account
- log incoming and outgoing Skype-calls
- manage Skype services, like voice-mail and conferencing right in the Asterisk