Skype yet to feel meltdown - COO

Several months after the global meltdown, was accepted at the universal level, the chief operating officer (COO) of internet telephony service provider, Skype, Mr. Scott Durchslag, has said the firm is yet to feel the impact.

He told newsmen at the Las Vegas, during the Consumer Electronics Show that Skype is seeing a surge in new users as people look for ways to cut their phone bills, reports CNET.

According to him, Skype foresee more subscribers and mostly Internet users taking up service with Internet telephony in order to bring down their cost of phone bills.

“We are seeing consumer take-up of Skype accelerating because people feel they can get value and quality without making a huge trade-off,” he said, stressing that they are seeing a whole new opportunity in the business market, as companies that they never thought would never thought of coming to them are queuing up for their services so as to find solution.

Skype, which is owned by eBay, offers downloadable software that allows people to make free calls to other Skype users and low-cost calls to mobile phones and regular phones.

The service also offers free video chat, while the company boasts of having over 370 million registered users globally.

“We’ve been adding about 30 million subscribers a quarter,” Durchslag said, pointing out that these users are making lots of phones calls.

“Today, about eight per cent of the world’s voice minutes originate from a Skype call,” he said.

Emphasizing that Skype has been growing about 50 per cent compared to the previous year in almost every metric from minutes used to new subscribers to revenues, just as the company recently announced its seventh straight quarter of profitability.

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