On Tuesday Microsoft announced it would purchase the Internet communication giant Skype for $8.5 billion cash. This move represented Microsoft’s biggest purchase in history and signified a huge step forward in the company’s battle with Google. Skype has been the most popular Internet communication software to date with over 107 million users. Something especially relevant about Skype’s users though are their reliability. The 107 million users averaged about a 100 minutes a week in Skype time. This is a massive amount of traffic for one application and it’s clear Mircrosoft wanted to tap into that user base.
This move also has huge implications for Microsoft’s rival Google. The purchase of Skype means that Microsoft now has an easy corner on the video-audio Internet market. Skype also means more pop culture value for the company. People don’t “Microsoft” but they do “Skype”. It’s become a verb and that has huge potential in regards to advertising and overall popular relevance.
But the purchase won’t only be helping Bill Gates’ technology giant. While Skype has been vastly popular, they have had trouble yielding a profit. This is in large part due to the fact that most of their services are free. In fact, Skype incurred a $7 million loss last year which is simply remarkable considering the company’s popularity. I would hope that Microsoft can find a way to turn Skype’s popularity into cold hard cash without taking away all their awesome free services as they are what makes Skype great.
Also expect to see Skype integrated into a lot of Microsoft’s products. Smartphones, computers, Xbox etc… All these things will definitely contain some version of Skype in the near future.
Similar Posts:
- How to Craft a Winning Résumé in the Accounting Field
- 5 Ways to Earn Some Extra Cash This Summer
- 4 Great Ways to Optimize Your Tweets
- Should You Take an Unpaid Internship?
- Three Web Tools Every College Student Must Use
