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.
Skype Brings Facebook-To-Facebook Calling To Its Client
There could be nothing better than to reach nearly a billion people through Facebook. The social network has become a target for tons of digital entities trying to leverage the social network. We will not talk about brands and business, rather online services and the most recent example is that of Spotify. Yesterday, Skype made a more social move by enabling Facebook to Facebook Calls via the Skype Client.
Skype already had Facebook integration in its clients. However the latest move follows the announcement Skype made back in July regarding powering the Facebook video chat feature. The platform is widely used and offers Facebook the perfect service to roll out or integrate video chat functionality within the social network’s ecosystem.
One of Skype's Co-founders To Take On Netflix Internationally
Gigaom has confirmed that Janus Friis, the Danish cofounder of Skype, is now developing a mysterious service called Vdio that will likely compete with Netflix internationally. Little is know about the company, but the logo simply asks, "Are you watching?"
Facebook Integration Comes With Skype 5.4 Beta For Mac
Skype seems to have speeded up its release of the version for the Mac and the latest update of Skype brings the much needed Facebook integration with Skype 5.4 Beta for Mac. This is similar to the Skype for Windows, and the news is definitely a big plus for Facebook users who own a Mac. Pretty much completes the Skype, Facebook and Mac triangle.
The update will enable Skype users to send instant messages and connect with their Facebook friends, right from their Skype client, giving them the true experience of one stop communication. The update lets users:
When A Blog Post Won't Do Justice
Even though this blog post will most likely be a feeble attempt in covering the importance and the effect of Steve Blank's visit to Finland and the region last week - I'll still have an attempt at it. Last week was packed full of action and discussion where Steve Blank talked not only with entrepreneurs but politicians, MPs and academia. He also upped entrepreneurship a few notches on the editorial importance for some of Finland's newspapers as he talked to a group of editors-in-chief (including us) why entrepreneurship is of vital importance to nations' success.
Steve Blank was visiting Finland last week to promote the importance of a working entrepreneurial ecosystem to the region. I have a feeling his visit will go down in one of those turning points in history for this part of the world. Not only did he incite more flames into the "Finnish spring" as he referred to the entrepreneurial revolution taking place in Finland, but he did so in a manner that politicians, mainstream media and academics can understand.
Skype Acquires GroupMe For $85 Million
Skype, now owned by Microsoft, has announced that it will acquire GroupMe, a 16-month old group messaging startup for $85 million. There are no public statements on the price of the deal, but AllThingsD has come up with the figure referring to sources close to the negotiations. The startup was founded based on work done in a hackathon at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York in May 2010. During the 16 months of its existence, GroupMe has raised $850 000 in seed financing and later $10.6 million in venture financing. Needless to say, the payout for the investment in such a short time period is fantastic.
Microsoft Acquires Skype For $8.5B: The Who Takes What Of The Deal
It couldn’t have come at a better time than this. We had been anticipating the official word on the Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype since early morning and word has been rolled out that the acquisition has been finalized and done with. The rumored buyout price was $7 Billion and the tech community across the globe thought it was far fetched. Here’s a shocker; Microsoft paid a healthy $8.5B for its acquisition of Skype, giving it a total control of the company, even the $686M debt on it.
Microsoft, Not Facebook Or Google, To Acquire Skype For $7B
We reported a few days back regarding the possibility of the VoIP service, Skype being acquired by either Facebook or Google. While that rumor was still blazing across the Web new rumors add up, with the latest hinting at Microsoft being a very strong contender in the race to acquire Skype.
Facebook Or Google To Buy Skype
What is Skype worth? Financially speaking we will not be able to put the exact amount on record but it is worthy enough to have both Facebook and Google seriously thinking about buying the video calling service after it delayed filing for the IPO. If this by any means has any truth to it, the deal can be valued at a healthy $3 to $4 billion as Reuters reports.
Skype Reacts To Skype 5 For Mac Feedback
Skype has for the first time reacted to the public fury regarding their new Skype 5 update for the Mac. The app was released earlier this year and ever since it has received a lot of feedback, mostly negative, due to the large redesign many consider a step back from version 2.8. On Friday, April 1st mind you, Skype finally reacted to the feedback with a blog post.
Skype Comes To The Classroom
Skype is setting itself to become a center of all attention as it comes to the classroom. The idea is to connect teachers beyond classrooms with its online directory. Again this isn’t about teachers only, but rather bringing a global experience to students as well.
Facebook To Bring Video Chat Features, Thanks To Skype!
Facebook is one of the biggest online destinations people use globally. Facebook itself has been very careful not to let go of these people too easily. People are extremely engaged with the service and all new features they add, are built around this view. Video chat is no exception. We have been hearing reports of a possibility of Facebook video chat coming soon in partnership with Skype.
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.
Spotify's Progress is Significant For Northern Europe
In the previous post with Nexit Ventures we talked about the maths behind venture capital. In the post we basically outlined with the help of very basic level maths and assumptions why venture capitalists aim for ten fold returns on their investments. As the business of venture capital and risky investments is mainly a hit business, similar to the music industry - big hits and home runs are needed every time. In this light, there are a handful of companies in the region that have a huge significance to the valuation of the ecosystem itself.
Skype Reaches Another Milestone - 29 Million Users Simultaneously Online
There has to be a bit of Skype in every communication. It might sound a bit exaggerated given that quite a massive chunk of the world is yet be online or take advantage of the latest innovations in technology for effective communication, but talking about Skype for the moment, it registered another milestone.
Skype To Bring Its Services To Emerging Markets With Mobile Partner Program
I recall mentioning in my earlier post about Skype adding 350 jobs to its firm and how it had a lot of other markets to expand into other than Europe and Asia. Not all markets offer high 3G bandwidth penetration, a reason why many mobile users aren’t inclined to use Skype. People at the firm are aware of this and they have been working out partnerships to leverage all sorts of markets and make Skype a more global mobile communication service.
Skype Announces To Add 350 New Jobs In 2011
Who doesn’t want to be a part of a big brand, that is revolutionary, transforming a certain aspect of your life and connects you to millions of users anywhere across the globe? Everyone does, and Skype is definitely one of those brands. Over a 100 million active users, utilizing the communication tool for personal and professional use. And guess what Skype is adding more opportunities for passionate people to be a part of it.
Niklas Zennström Invests In Fashiolista, He Is No Alien To Fashion
Too much of call or video oriented ventures associated to Niklas Zennström. You can watch our recent video interviews with him here and here. The Skype co-founder recently revealed his passion for fashion as his investment firm, Atomico Ventures made a $500,000 seed investment in Fashiolista.
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.
Skype Introduces Group Video Calling, Keen At Acquiring Qik
There are mixed reports on the communication platform provider, Skype showing willingness to acquire Qik, the video streaming service for an undisclosed amount. The indications of this first sprung when Skype’s CEO, Tony Bates agreed on Skype having intentions to do so. Though the price is undisclosed, it is reported to be in the $100 Million range with the deal expected to close by the end of January.
Rdio: Music Start-Up From Skype Founders
Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström recently created Rdio (pronounced ar-dee-oh) - an unlimited, on-demand social music service in US and Canada. The service is very similar to Spotify, though there is no way to use it for free (apart from a short trial period). Rdio offers a vast music library (> 7 million songs) from all major labels (EMI Music, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group) as well as top indie labels and distributors. It's got social features akin to Twitter: users can see what is currently popular among other users and create and listen to collaborative playlists. The company promises to 'take the work out of deciding what to play next'. All that for $9.99 a month for unlimited web and mobile access (including the offline mode) and $4.99 a month for Web-only access. Rings a bell?
Reuters: Skype IPO To Take Place In 2011
According to Reuters and its sources, Skype IPO will take place in 2011. Skype is still assessing a number of factors before making the decision to go ahead with the IPO. Last month, Skype named Tony Bates, a former Cisco executive its CEO. Bates is expected to make the decision on the IPO once he gets more acquainted with the staff and the products.
Aalto Venture Garage Bootcamp Graduates An Interesting Set of Ideas
Last Friday, 100+ people gathered in a converted workshop in Otaniemi to witness the results of the latest AaltoVG Bootcamp. After the traditional welcome words, the teams were lined up and delivered the latest version of their one line/sentence summary of their idea, and having seen them just one week ago the transformation was remarkable.
SA Insider Lists World's 100 Most Valuable Digital Startups - Sulake and Skype Listed
SA Insider has listed its own 100 most valuable digital startups. The list is pretty US oriented with only a few companies from other parts of the world. From Nordic and Baltic region, you can find 2 companies - Skype and Sulake. The list immediately sparked lots of good debate about who's missing the list and why. One of those opinions can be found from Ben Black. He argues that, in my opinion correctly, that there are lots of social gaming companies valued over $100M that didn't make the list ($100M seems to be the cut off line more or less for the last companies on the list).
Maintain Your Sticky Notes Online With Listhings.com
Listhings.com is a new Estonian "eco-friendly" online web tool for storing sticky notes about anything from To-Do lists to grocery lists and phone numbers.
The man behind the project is Martin Tajur, also Creative Director and co-founder of United Dogs and Cats (see our previous coverage). Martin has also worked as a graphical and user experience designer at Skype.
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Martin told us that the service has gathered a bit over thousand registered users since the beginning of the public sign-up period in mid-September 2009, in about one and a half months. He also continued that the amount of registered users seems to double in about a month's time, or even faster. It is also possible to use the service without signing up, and apparently many do. Just this week Listhings passed 100,000 saved notes.
According to Martin, the service started from a hobby project. He has been developing the service gradually, responding also to user feedback. Martin also emphasizes that Listhings is hosted in a 100% carbon neutral way, meaning that for all energy consumed to keep Listhings' servers running, Emission Reduction Credits are purchased. Thus the tagline "store notes, save trees".
The look and feel of the service is really nice. One can start creating notes right away and writing, resizing, changing color, and moving the notes around all work smoothly. It is also possible to create multiple canvases to get more space and add categorization for your notes. There aren't too many features for now, but just enough to efficiently do the trick.
There is a lot of potential in the service, and Listhings could a be great tool for creating and keeping track of notes at daily work, also on multiple computers. But to really unleash its potential and to consider giving up a physical notebook, a mobile app or access is clearly needed. Luckily, Martin has already indicated that an iPhone synchronization app is on the way and available soon.
Spotify Aims For €230 Million Valuation
We all love Spotify here at ArcticStartup and use it everyday to listen our favorite tracks. We also know that it was not cheap to begin with for the VCs to invest in Spotify even though it was (and still is) the early days, since the founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon had plenty of experience, capital of their own and know what they were doing. But if you thought it was expensive before, the Times Online reports that "Spotify is trying to drum up a valuation of close to £200m (roughly €230m) as it seeks new investment of between £20m (€23m) and £30m (€35m)."
Times Online further reports that If it Spotify achieves the valuation it aims for, the company will have almost trebled in value since it sold a £13m stake last autumn to Nordic investors Northzone Ventures and Creandum.
We are excited and for once, think the high valuation is for a very good reason. Just recently in an investor forum I heard a VC who had invested in Spotify proudly stating that Spotify is the next Skype, meaning that it will be the next big Internet service success story coming from the region. They certainly have the right direction and I don't think I have seen any company have the same potential since. Regardless of whether Spotify ever reaches a $2.6 billion exit (with current exchange rate some €1.87 billion), or exit at all for that matter, I, for one, would invest in a heart beat.
Ebay Finally Admitting The Acquisition Of Skype Was A Mistake
Ebay just announced a plan for 2010 IPO of Skype. A lot can be said about the journey of the two companies so far, but we think it's hight time for the relationship to end - For Skype's and and for Ebay's benefit. By not letting the Skype founders buy back the company, Ebay is sending a message of it's own, but an Initial Public Offering pushed all the way to 2010 means practically nothing but that Ebay is not happy with Skype's performance so far and that they are taking bids.
By pushing the date that far into the future and annoucing that "specific timing of the IPO will be based on market conditions" the company is effectively saying that anything can happen between now and then. They might not even let Skype go if it starts to perform or if it becomes a real strategic asset, which it hardly will.
The message to take away from this is that now even Ebay has confessed that there are no synergies between the two companies and that they made a bad investment -Ebay thought it would be an ideal way for buyers and sellers to talk to each other before the seller makes the purchase decision. All well, except that naturally the sellers don't want to talk to all the buyers and answer all questions about the product. Skype is not a bad investment per se, but a bad investment for Ebay. I believe Skype will have a bright future ahead with eight percent of all international calls and $551 million in revenue, but I would not hold my breath to see an IPO even in 2010. Much can happen before that.
You can read more about the announcement from the press release.
Skype To Target Business Users
Even though Skype is not a startup anymore, I believe there is a great story behind this news item. Wall Street Journal has written about Skype, how they are under pressure from eBay stockholders to create more revenue or be sold off. Reports show that Skype has hit 400 million users and has created some $145 million in revenues during the first quarter of 2009.
Sten Tamkivi told us in Tallinn this January that they have seen a rise in Skype usage as the recession hit the finance markets. Seems the figures support this strongly. Even though Skype has been built as a consumer product they are under pressure to create more revenue for their owners. One of the new areas they are targeting is the business communication industry as well as moving into the territory of other Nordic VoIP companies such as Rebtel.
Skype Spear Heading A Bigger Change
Whatever you say about the materialized synergies of Ebay and Skype after Ebay paid $2.6 billion in up-front cash and eBay stock in 2005 to acquire the IP telephony trail blazer, Skype is currently really making me smile by changing the landscape.
Despite, or perhaps because of, the spiraling global economics outlook, Skype last year earned US$550 million in revenue, a 44 per cent rise, year on year. During the last ArcticEvening that we held in Tallinn, Stem Tamkivi, Skype's Chief Evangelist, told me during the panel that interestingly Skype actually saw the economic downturn coming quite early as their usage started to rise like it has not risen in years.
Not only that, according to PCWorld, Skype maintains that separate research points to 95 per cent of business users saving money using it, with about a third cutting their phone bills by half. Almost 80 per cent of the survey of 'Skype for Business' users, showed that nearly 80 per cent had seen an increase in productivity and were working closer with their co-workers because of using Skype ... [And] the research shows that some 62 per cent of business subscribers were using Skype to better communicate with their customers. Some impressive figures. For us, here at ArcticStartup, this is clear sign of the times.
Mark my words. If it wasn't clear to you before that IP Telephony was taking its next significant step speeded up by the economic belt tightening in the firms, now it should be crystal clear and I believe we see sigficant even if gradual changes very soon in the way small businesses and individual employees start to exploit this opportunity in cross border communication.
I already personally make 100% of my business calls to Tallinn via Skype. Many firms in Estonia have even a separate Skype button on their website to contact them via Skype. This is surely something we could take upon and start running our business more wisely, not only across the Scandinavia and Baltics, but globally.
Yes, some still claim it does not cut it when it comes to the quality of the sound, and you just can't afford to have a bad connection when you're talking to customers. A fair point. But Skype 4.0, should now offer higher quality audio, through 'super wideband audio' and a new bandwidth manager for video calling.
And we're not alone in our praise. The Finish giant, Nokia, has also made a big move. On Tuesday Nokia announced that they are planning to fully integrate Skype into their devices:
The first Skype-enabled Nokia N97 devices will be rolling out from the third quarter. Using Skype on your S60 device isn’t new, but the level of integration with the service and the device is. Skype won’t be running as a separate application, but actually plugged directly into your contacts...
Congratulations for both companies and especially to the users. I have high expectations and it makes me hopeful seeing Nokia having the balls to stand up to the operators. The same enabler that works for small businesses can do much more for the developing countries, which are exactly the markets where Nokia is strong. This announcement alone could mean a bigger chance towards a higher quality of life over time to many people in developing countries than a whole lot of World Bank projects together. Yes, there's a long way to go and now for example the WiFi hotspots are few and far in between in the least developed countries, but there's still a lot of people who can benefit from this from South America to Africa.
Interview with Sten Tamkivi, Skype Chief Evangelist
Here's an interview with Sten Tamkivi who's the Chief Evangelist at Skype. We did the interview in co-operation with Toivo Tänavsuu from Tigerprises. Tamkivi will reveal for example what Skype is looking to do next, thing or two about alternative revenue streams for Skype and much more. See for yourself. Tamkivi will also be our panelist this week at the ArcticEvening.
Interview with Sten Tamkivi from Skype from Toivo Tänavsuu on Vimeo.
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