Mark Evans

Zennstrom's Math

I had a short chat with Skype's Niklas Zennstrom during VON Canada. You have to like his math: 34 million registered users, 1.2 million paying costs, very low marginal costs. Sooner or later, the telecom industry is going to have to take Skype seriously. You can either embrace disruptive technology or try to kill it. Look at how the music industry, which jumped all over new technology in the form of CDs, continues to wage a Don-Quixote-like battle against the P2P world.
I have already bumped into start-ups looking to become part of Skype's eco-system. One of them is Ottawa-based Iotum Corp., which is providing contextual messaging services for VOIP service providers. According to Iotum CEO Howard Thaw, Iotum is “Find me, Follow me on steroids”.