Microsoft nearing $7 Billion purchase of Skype

[welshbloke]

disolitude said:

fps_d0minat0r said:

one question....

couldnt micorosft make something better than skype for that amount of money??

i mean just look at it....its a way of talking through the internet, surely it would cost way less than 7bn to make something similar.

They probably could and do it better...but there is no guarantee that it would have the 150 million users that Skype has.

Microsoft basically bought 150 million users with 8.5 billion dollars. Skype had 30% growth every year for the last 4 years, and once it hits mainstream services like Xbox live and is native in Windows 8...it should easily double in a few years.

Maybe 150 million active users but they have also purchased the registrations of 665 million Skype users. I agree the true benefit will be when they integrateSkype into Microsoft products such as the new Office 365 product (replacement to BPOS). Lync which is the product they did build themselves although good in some areas falls down in many other places. Also this kinda of opens up Skype which if anything was one of its problems now Microsoft can market two products and cater for both the consumer and the business user.

They effectively have purchased a recognised IP telephony name (A name they do not have themselves in any great degree) and coupled it with the bigger brand that is Microsoft.

Like all things time will tell if this was a smart investment but I think like the Nokia deal this will prove to have been a smart move for Microsoft.