Is Skype for sale or not? Is it considering an IPO or not? It's hard to tell what's what given the speculation about talks with Rupert Murdoch and the hiring of Morgan Stanley as a financial advisor. According to TechWeb News, the company is now claiming it is not for sale. How should this claim be taken? Does it mean Skype didn't get anywhere near the $3-billion is was apparently seeking? Is an IPO the preferred route because it will provide Skype's VCs with liquidity while allowing Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis to maintain control of the company? Questions, questions, questions! One thing we do know is Skype has signed up more than two million subscribers for its premium services, which include SkypeIn and SkypeOut. Of course, we don't know how often they actually use these services or ARPU. As for SkypeIn and SkypeOut, I wonder when/whether they will be coming to Canada.
By the way, any interested in VOIP and its future should check out Om Malik's post on the long-term impact of voice over instant-messaging applications.
Whenever I hear Skype for sale, I remember that Google is raising $4b.
-Randy
SkypeOut is in Canada – you can dial Canadian numbers and have been from day one. I don't think you can get a Canadian area code from SkypeIn yet but area codes are starting to become meaningless now anyhow.
SkypeOut is available to any Skype user to call anywhere from anywhere worldwide (per minute charges vary by receiving country). There are issues with having Candian SkypeIn area codes … one may want to set up to receive calls that would be “local” to, say, Vancouver callers. Also without a Toronto SkypeIn number, Toronto callers would have to pay long distance tolls to call, say, a New York area code that has SkypeIn numbers to reach a SkypeIn subscriber located in Toronto.