Rebtel Hits 15 M Users Worldwide, 2011 Revenue Jumped 55% To $60 M
It's easy to think that Skype is the only kid on the block, but its VOIP competitors are hitting significant numbers. Rebtel, the world's second largest VOIP network, announces today that it has hit 15 million users worldwide and has increased revenues by more than 55% in 2011 to $60 million in revenue. The company attributes this to its transparency, honesty, and new innovations, such as the KeepTalking technology that lets users switch seamlessly between between WIFI and 3G if the smartphone app senses the connection quality is deteriorating. In comparison to Rebtel's 15 million users, Skype has 663 million registered users as of September 2011.
Spotify Doubled Its Market Share In 2011
According to reports by IFPI and some other data available, it seems that Spotify doubled its market share in 2011 as compared to 2010. And by market share we mean the global streaming music market as followed by International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).
Also, according to public records the company had filed in the UK we can tell Spotify's revenue was $99 million in 2010. Towards the end of 2010 they also shared that they had some 750 000 paying subscribers world wide. According to IFPI estimates, the global market for subscription services had about 8,2 millioin paying users. This yields Spotify a market share of around 9,1% in 2010.
Baltic Recruitment Service CV-Online Acquired By Alma Media
One of the largest Finnish media groups, Alma Media, has acquired CV Online, the internet recruitment service company in the Baltic countries. The size of the deal was not announced, but CV Online estimates its 2011 revenue at €2 million at a 30% growth. The company operates in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. According to the website's stats, the have exactly 1 364 969 registered users and 1 757 047 CVs.
Unfair Advantage - 004 - They Have To Suffer For Another Ten Years
The fourth episode of Unfair Advantage takes us to Denmark as we chat with Klaus Nyengaard, the Group CEO of Just Eat. Just Eat is originally from Denmark, where it was set up more than 10 years ago. In the last five or six years, the company has seen a huge growth in internationalisation and now operates in 15 countries. Their currently run forecasts that they will deliver somewhere around $750 million worth of food this year. Klaus Nyengaard gave us a very detailed view on their internationalisation strategy both from setting up shop yourself and acquiring existing players in the market to grow.
Would Transparency In Company Financials Increase Innovation?
A few days ago I listened to Horace Dediu's Critical Path and it got me thinking that would governments be able to increase innovation and competition through more transparency in the economy. Dediu talked about the movie business in one the more recent shows and he stated it many times that it is very hard to analyse the industry at large as they do not provide any figures on how different players are doing.
Further into the podcast, he went on to explain the findings of his study and more specifically how movies are financed as well as how the accounting works in the industry. Having listened to his findings, I completely understand why there is so little innovation and disruption taking place in the industry.
The lack of innovation was put in concrete explanation in Fred Wilson's blog post on AVC yesterday where he argues that scarcity is a bad business. He writes how he wanted to find something interesting to watch through many different legal movie services, but was unable to find anything worthwhile. In the end he had to resort to a "foreign rogue site", as he put it.
DealDash Recruiting Talent With Strong Growth And $1M Investment
Our January's recruiting partner is DealDash, a Helsinki, Finland based startup. They operate a "gamified" shopping site that we've been covering recently. Back in October we covered their growth in quite a bit of detail, but we're very happy to report that this growth has further continued and seems to continue into the future. To fuel this, they of course require the best of talent that is out there.
Currently DealDash is looking for front-end developers. If you've got your doubts about the financials of this particular startup, you need not worry.
Rebtel 2.0 Now Out On Android, Service Claims 15 Million Users
As Rebtel launches version 2.0 of it's VOIP app on Android, they also announce they have hit 15 million users making it easily the second largest VOIP company after Skype. With a run rate of over 1 billion minutes per year, the company claims it is on pace to hit $75 million in revenue by the end of 2011. This competition in the VOIP sector can only benefit consumers, as you can see with the innovations present in their new app update.
Angry Birds 2011 Revenue Around $100 Million, Looking To IPO In Hong Kong In 2013
Rovio's Chief Marketing Officer, also known as the Mighty Eagle, has come out with figures regarding Rovio's financials in an interview by Tekniikka & Talous, a Finnish newspaper. In the interview, he also said Rovio is looking to IPO in Hong Kong in 2013. In 2010 Rovio's revenue was around $10 million. This year the company expects its turnover to be around $100 million.
Kim Forsman Of Maventa: Customers Are Your Lifeline
In the past few years even the biggest and most traditional organizations have taken steps to modernize their services. In the banking business, E-invoicing is here to stay due to the worldwide incentives to get this working. In the For example in Denmark, Tradeshift has seen a lot of traction with their model. The situation in Finland is slightly different due to the numerous operators offering solutions in this area. One of them is Maventa.
We've covered Maventa in the past as well, back in 2010. Back then we called them the rebel e-invoicing provider and it seems the rebels are taking over "the universe".
A Breakdown Of The Daily Deals Market in Denmark
Continuing from our previous coverage of the daily deals market in the Baltics, we're taking a look at the Danish market with information and analysis provided to us by Bownty, the leading daily deals aggregator in Denmark. The company provides a service similar to what Kayak does for air travel; they collect and put together the daily deals for more than 600 cities around the globe, to the point where at any given time more than 4500 deals are available on the service.
Bownty is in a nice postion to give some analysis about the market because as an aggregator, they have little conflict of interest in exaggerating the data. We talked with CEO and Co-founder Steffen Frølund and gained access to data from the several hundred-thousand deals that have been run through their platform.
Profium Signs A Million Euro Deal With AFP
Finnish software company Profium, creating solutions for the media industry, has signed a million euro deal with AFP (Agence France-Presse). AFP is the world's oldest news press and they create news in six different languages, around the clock, around the world. The deal enables AFP to take Profium's Metadata Server into global use. The deal is valued at one million euros, which is significant for this Espoo based company. 2010 revenues for the company were 1.4 million euros.
The Zendesk Story, A Moment With Mikkel Svane
I managed to grab 20 minutes of Mikkel Svane's time in LeWeb to interview him on the evolution of Zendesk and some of the thinking they had behind building a world class company in just a few years. Zendesk isn't just your usual startup, if there really even is one. Zendesk very early decided to move its headquarters to the States after raising their second round in 2008. The company focuses in providing the very best help desk solutions online, which only aren't extremely easy to use and integrate, but also beautiful.
Minecraft Reaches 18 Million Downloads
Minecraft, the super popular Swedish indie game, has reached 18 million downloads. This can be seen from the statistics on the game website. In addition to the 18 million downloads, the game has been bought by 4.3 million people. With current price of 19,95€ a piece that translates to a over 80 million euros in revenue. However, the game has been priced differently over the years so this is just a guiding figure.
Spotify Revenue $99 Million With A Loss Of $42 Million In 2010
Spotify's revenue in 2010 grew some 458 percent, according to public filings in Britain. The company financials were first reported by New York Times. The company's subscription business model brought in some $71 million while advertising generated $28 million. Despite the growing revenue, the company invested heavily into expansion and development (not to mention artist earnings) - losses for the year were $42 million, up from $26 million in 2009.
The Story Of Wooden Labyrinth 3D
The Wooden Labyrinth 3D was one of the more popular Finnish mobile apps before the arrival of Angry Birds from Rovio. To this date, Wooden Labyrinth has been downloaded some 10+ million times. The app was developed in 2009 by Elias Pietilä in February 2009. We've covered Elias Pietilä before when he ran into problems with a game called Pajazzo with the Finnish Moneygaming Association (RAY). We talked to Pietilä about the success of the game.
Since the launching of the game, it has generated a couple of hundred thousand euros for Pietilä. In the beginning of 2009 the game was immediately being sold for a few hundred euros a day. After giving out the free version of the game, the paid version improved sales as well.
Paper: Spotify Worth 1.6B Euro
The Swedish business paper Dagens Industri has written that they consider Spotify, the crown jewel of the Swedish internet companies currently, to be valued at around 1.6B euros (or 15 billion Swedish crowns). The paper values Spotify in comparison to the recent IPO of Pandora, which was valued at almost 3.5 billion dollars at IPO. The stock fell below its IPO price of $17 and closed yesterday at $13.26.
Sulake Revenue Grows +20%, Sells IRC-Gallery
Sulake has today announced their figures for fiscal year 2010, as well as some changes to their ownership of online properties. In 2010, Sulake turned over 56,2 million euros, which is over 20% more than in 2009. EBITDA for 2010 was at 5,4 million euros profit for the year was at 1,6 million euros. In addition to announcing their financials, Sulake has stated that they have today sold IRC-Gallery to Somia Reality Oy, which is run by a few former IRC-Gallery employees and funded by Lifeline Ventures and a few individual investors.
Stardoll Begins Countdown To 100M Members
Stardoll states itself as the largest online community for girls who love fashion. Indeed, it's getting very big. Last night we caught a retweet by Henrik Torstensson, a former SVP of strategy at Stardoll, stating that Stardoll is getting close to acquiring its 100 millionth member. We got in touch with Stardoll and they stated that they're not there yet, but getting close.
Rebtel Continues With Its Record Breaking Spree; Reaches 10 Million Users
Rebtel continues to grow by leaps and bounds and set to continue with the same as per its recent growth. The company announced that it has crossed the 10 million users globally, continuing with its high riding performance lately. As per the current statistics Rebtel is growing almost five times faster than Skype the leading VoIP service provider. Rebtel has increased its revenue by over 120%, exceeding beyond $40 Million in 2010 and given how it has grown, Rebtel is in line to double the same and push the revenue to $75 Million by the end of the current year.
Valkee Sold 5000 Devices By January 2011
Bob Helsinki, a Helsinki based advertising agency, has disclosed some interesting figures regarding Valkee in their application to Grand One, a Helsinki based annual gala for ad agencies. In the application, the agency states, that Valkee sold 691 devices during the two month campaign period from October 11th to December 12th last year. 691 devices at 185€ a piece yields a nice 127 835 euros. However, the agency later discloses that they sold a lot more by early January.
Spotify: One Million Paying Customers
Spotify has announced today that they have reached the point of one million simultaneous customers. This is huge. The company launched its service just some two years ago and they now have million simultaneous customers and over 10 million registered users altogether. However, Peter Kafka from AllThingsD states that Spotify has some 7 million active users in its service, yielding a whopping 15% conversion rate for their service.
Angry Birds Could Be The Next Mickey Mouse
Rovio is well on its way to stardom with Angry Birds. Business Insider reported last week that Rovio has sold more than 2 million toys already since October. In mere five months, the company has essentially generated at least 20 million euros worth of revenue through its toys (if we hypothetically agree on a 10€ average price per toy sold - they actually sell for $11.99 and $14.99). Plush toys are just one source of revenue for the company, other major sources include iOS apps, advertising on the Android platform as well as the Mighty Eagle add on.
The Maths Behind Venture Capital
I want to be fully honest about this, but I'm really thrilled to be sharing information like this so openly about the venture capital business with the help of Nexit Ventures about the mathematics behind the venture capital business. While it's pretty straight forwards on a basic level, it's great to get these figures actually with comments from an actual investor. In this post, we'll look at the fundamental financials and why venture capitalists are looking for certain growth figures in the way they invest.
Indiedays Exceeds 1st Year Goals With Ease
A little over a year ago we reported on a Finnish media startup called Indiedays. The company put together a fashion, beauty and lifestyle network of bloggers, all under the same address to leverage their traffic and build a new media destination. I talked to the CEO and co-founder Esa Suurio about their development in 2010 and how they were able to exceed their goals.
Yandex's Year-Over-Year Revenue Up 43%
Yandex, one of the biggest internet companies operating in Russia and the likes of Kazakhstan and Ukraine reported its 2010 revenue increase 43% compared to 2009. The giant reported revenues of 12.5 billion rubles in 2010, which equal to $410 million US. Yandex makes most of its revenue from contextual advertising, just as its counterpart Google does in the US.
Interview With Andreas Bernström, CEO Of Rebtel
Rebtel is a very interesting Swedish telephony company. This year, the Rebtel is expecting to make $75 million through VoIP telephony. The company has seen immense growth and it's been a fantastic company to follow. Last Friday, the company released their Blackberry app to further fuel the growth. The reason, or at least one of the, why Rebtel has become so successful is their concept of VoIP calls - they don't require the user to have a working internet connection, but instead transmit the calls through local numbers. This way, it sort of falls in between the likes of Skype and companies offering calling cards. It's pretty much a perfect approach for the mobile generation.
In the interview Andreas Bernström sheds some light on how the company has grown and where they're headed. With $75 million in expected revenues for this year, they want to remain independent and further grow the company.
Interview With Tiina Zilliacus Of Ironstar Helsinki
Ironstar Helsinki is a Finnish game developer that has been previously developing a social game called Moipal, but changed course to developing Facebook games earlier last year. Tiina Zilliacus is the CEO of the company and joined it early 2010 to help the company build new traction. I did a short e-mail based interview with her to learn how 2010 has looked for the company and how they've managed to build their business forward. I had the idea of the interview after having a little chat with Tiina Zilliacus at a recent Christmas gathering in Helsinki. Their recent development has been impressive and is definitely worth covering for our community as well.
Breakdown Of Mail.ru Group's Finances
When filing for an IPO Mail.ru Group disclosed some interesting financial indicators for the different platforms they own. At the moment Mail.ru Group itself is mostly owned by Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian investment fund. Mail.ru Group's fixed assests include 10% of Mail.ru portal, 100% of a social network Odnoklassniki, 91% of recruitment portal Headhunter.ru, 100% of ICQ LLC, 24,99% of Russia's biggest social network Vkontakte.ru, 25,09% of QIWI Investments, 2,38% of Facebook, 1,47% of online-game developer Zynga Inc. and 5,13% of Groupon. On top of that Mail.ru owns minority shares in a plethora of Russian and Ukrainian Internet companies.
Is Apple Blocking Spotify In US To Protect iTunes?
CNET ran an article on Spotify and its troubles of setting up business in the US. Many believe it's the stubbornness of the record companies that have slowed them down to a halt almost. However, the CNET article states that Apple maybe protecting its iTunes Store from Spotify and talking with record labels to think twice about the ad-supported model. According to the CNet article, Apple executives are worried about the effects of a free music service might have on the rest of the market.
Applifier Is On Fire With "Substantial Revenue"
Reporting from the Mindtrek conference, I managed to have a chat with Jussi Laakkonen the CEO of Applifier about their service and what's been keeping them busy in the recent months. Only a little over a month ago we reported about the company reaching 55 million monthly active users (MAUs) within Facebook with their cross promotion network. Applifier is the successful (I think we can give it to them already easily) full company pivot from Everyplay, which used to be a 3D social game in Facebook.
