Skype Files For IPO 87
helix2301 writes with news that Skype has filed plans with the SEC for an initial public offering. From TechCrunch:
"According to the filing, Skype's revenues for the first six months of 2010 were $406 million, with a net income of only $13 million. But a big portion of that was from interest income. That is only a 3 percent net margin, and this isn't exactly a new business. Its income from operations was only $1.4 million for the six months. However, its gross margins are 51 percent, and have been expanding steadily as the company benefits from the scale of is operations and is able to negotiate lower telephone termination fees around the world."
Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Approaching one of the big cellular networks would be a good move, and require investment to improve their capacity. Right now they have a deal with Three in the UK that sees their client installed on all their smartphones. Skype snatches the lucrative "overseas student calling home" market away from phonecards, gets some more visibility, while Three gets to look like they're the hot shit dogs on the 3G data campus. (In fact, they've arranged to route Skype calls on their standard voice network for convenience.)
They're probably viewing Apple's recent attempt to launch videocalling in the US with some enthusiasm, too. That'd take some serious infrastructure.
Buried... (Score:2, Interesting)
part of Skype's strategy will be to:...Develop new monetization models, including advertising."
That doesn't sound good. Skype is quite useful to me at the moment (for both VOIP and IM), but if advertising gets in the way, I won't be very happy.
But on the other hand, I guess I use a combination of hosts-file blocking and adblock/flashblock with my browser, so Skype's intrusions will just get added to the counter-measures I take.
Re:Buried... (Score:5, Interesting)
Lessons learned from Vonage IPO (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder what measures Skype has taken to mitigate such risk?
Competition Just About To Tighten (Score:3, Interesting)
One factor behind the IPO might be cashing out while business is still good. An eight hundred pound gorilla is entering this ring. Google bought out Gizmo5 last year, ostensibly to beef up Google Voice. Rumors were that Google wanted a desktop VOIP program that would rival Skype. Recently, there has been reports of a leaked prototype app [worldtech24.com]. Last year, it was possible set up a hardware phone to work directly with Google Voice but that door was closed by Google. However, that opens the possibility of Google Voice being made available for hardware phones via an ATA. Google is dedicated to Google Voice because it's their door into the mobile phone/Android market and if they can datamine your phone calls using voice recognition, then they'd be making freaking gold for their search apps.