Skype hits 100 million downloads

By Steve Malone

Posted on 2 May 2006 at 10:32

VoIP company Skype has announced that it has over 100 million subscribers to its free Internet telephony service. The company claims that no other company has generated that number of downloads in just two and a half years.

While no-one doubts that 100 million people around the world have signed up for the Skype service, no figures are given on how many of those are active users. According to the facts and figures section of the Skype site, the number of users currently online doesn't often nudge above the seven figure mark and is quite often measured in the millions rather than the tens of millions. So where are all the subscribers?

As a free service Skype does not have a problem with churn in the same way that, for example, AOL does. People do not unsubscribe to Skype - they just stop using it. Therefore, the number of subscribers that the company actually has as active users is probably far less - possibly in the low tens of millions. Nevertheless, that is still a huge number although less than Skype's headline figures would have us believe.

The Luxembourg-based service was bought by auction giant eBay, who paid $2.6 billion for the group. Since then, the company has introduced a host of new innovations and services ranging from video calls through to ringtones in order to improve the attractions of the service and generate revenues.