Will Skype IPO Mean Greater Enterprise Focus?Will Skype IPO Mean Greater Enterprise Focus?
The company lists business services--large as well as SMB--as a potential source of future revenue. But what if it becomes the next BitTorrent?
August 9, 2010
The company lists business services--large as well as SMB--as a potential source of future revenue. But what if it becomes the next BitTorrent?
Skype has filed for an IPO, and Om Malik at GigaOm offers up some of the highlights of the SEC filing. One thing from the filing that I thought was interesting was the four points Skype made to justify its expectation of growing revenues in the future:
* First, we believe that there is a significant opportunity to grow our user base.
* Second, we believe that we can generate more communications revenue from our users by improving awareness and adoption of our paid products and introducing premium products such as group video calling.
* Third, we will continue to develop new monetization models for our large connected user base. We currently generate a small portion of our net revenues through marketing services (such as advertising) and licensing, which we expect will grow as a percentage of our net revenues over time.
* Fourth, we will broaden our user base to include more business users. For example, we have recently released and will continue to develop and market Skype for Business products that aim to capitalize on demand for Skype from small, medium and large businesses.
* Second, we believe that we can generate more communications revenue from our users by improving awareness and adoption of our paid products and introducing premium products such as group video calling.
* Third, we will continue to develop new monetization models for our large connected user base. We currently generate a small portion of our net revenues through marketing services (such as advertising) and licensing, which we expect will grow as a percentage of our net revenues over time.
* Fourth, we will broaden our user base to include more business users. For example, we have recently released and will continue to develop and market Skype for Business products that aim to capitalize on demand for Skype from small, medium and large businesses.
So we can expect Skype to target the enterprise more aggressively--note that Skype is specifically saying they're going after large businesses.
Contrast this with Google, which just closed down Google Wave. As I write in a post/newsletter (link to come), communications, at least realtime voice/UC, is not core to Google's business, which is selling ads. So if communications doesn't help Google sell ads, there's no reason for them to do it.
In contrast, Skype is a communications company. They need to find new users for their communications services, and new ways for existing users to use those services. As Skype notes earlier in their SEC filing, they're far from maxing out the addressable market of consumer/one-off users. But Skype already has an entre into the enterprise--it's widely used by business people, especially those who travel--so it has something to build on.
One other open question, at least something I wonder about: If Google is cutting a deal with Verizon on Net Neutrality, will Skype become the next BitTorrent?
