Skype everywhere

America's Network, Dec 1, 2004 by Grahame Lynch

No such worries over at Skype, where word-of-mouth and online hype have garnered the P2P firm an impressive 14.7 million downloads of its software. As most marketers know, acceptance of a freebie doesn't guarantee continued use. But Skype spokesperson Kelly Larabee tells Commfidential that the firm consistently sees 1 million simultaneous users online with the P2P platform.

New PSTN interconnect service SkypeOut has already mustered over 317,000 users, says Larabee. But Skype's most significant move of late was all but ignored by the press--a decision to put the Skype application programming interface online for free download by developers. Skype hopes this accelerates integration of its platform into new hardware and software applications. VoIP watchers were intrigued by an aside from Primus CEO Paul Singh on a conference call last month where he said that 20% of the firm's Lingo VoIP users abandoned their primary phone service.