Yesterday it was announced that Skype was being bought from eBay and would once more become an independent company. For Skype fans such as myself, this could be good news. Although the desktop client has been improving steadily over the past few years, the business model hasn’t.
Skype has more than 400 million registered users. It has a de-facto monopoly on VOIP. So why aren’t there donzens of desktop and web applications being built on top of the Skype technology? Why hasn’t Skype become a platform?
As a platform, Skype could solidify its hold on the market and it could make more money on SkypeIn, i.e. charging Skype users for calls to landlines. If it’s technically feasible, it seems obvious.
One answer might be that when eBay bought Skype, the underlying technology wasn’t included (which makes you wonder what eBay was smoking when they signed the $4 billion deal). Is that why the desktop client has been moving forward without any sign of development on the underlying technology?
