Earlier this year in January, Skype was being called as “toy” by AT&T Labs: as one could then read on Fortune, “[Skype] can't scale it, they don't have a brand like the AT&T brand, and they don't have the local footprint, which we have”, prophesizing that “[it]'s going to be very hard to compete with someone like AT&T".
Fast forward 10 months later: what we are witnessing is the proof that Skype can actually scale their solution: prominently displayed on their homepage is the recent announcement that the software has reached the 1 million simultaneous users mark. Adding that to the fact that Skype's own infrastructure is reduced to a strict minimum thanks to P2P technology (and people still wonder why they turned down industry-standard SIP...), the growth is mostly organic and almost immediately beneficial for Skype. While the marginal cost for Vonage and other VoIP operators is several hundred dollars for each new subscriber, for Skype it is barely a few tenths of a cent.
If we refer to Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma, we can say that Skype has been, and is still to some extent, a "toy" in the VoIP market. AT&T's quote is actually far from being naive, as Skype alone would have a hard time creating brand and customer confidence: especially in the corporate world, telephony is a "mission-critical" element that is not procured or outsourced lightly. Hence their quasi "wall-garden" and conservative moves towards VoIP.
The recent deals stroke by Skype clearly underlines the company's attempts at gaining a global credibility and brand image through partnerships that extend beyond the mere hardware/headset co-branding:
- IM and VoIP platform with TOM Online in China (October 24th).
- Co-branded telephony service through Livedoor portal in Japan (October 25th).
-Bundling of Skype into Guillemot / Hercules products and computer accessories (October 28th).
Another likely step forward fot Skype is to launch a service for getting a regular phone number that redirects calls to Skype users, a “SkypeIn” complement to SkypeOut. Will Skype succeed at becoming an operator without its associated infrastructure and support cost?
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