Skype
Skype Why It's Fierce: Every now and then a
company comes along with an idea that's not only
good and marketable, but that captures the spirit of
the moment. Skype is this company for the VoIP
industry. Leveraging peer-to-peer technology to
power a free PC-to-PC VoIP service, Skype attracted
nearly 10 million users in its first year of
operation. Since then, the company has expanded to
include prepaid voice. In the process, Skype has
recorded over 110 million downloads of its software.
The company has also added support for traditional
phones and now supports mobile devices, allowing
Internet calling from WiFi hotspots. Skype
represents network economics in the purest form:
free connections within the network become more
valuable to each user as more users sign up. Because
of the system's peer-to-peer design -- loosely
related to the Kazaa file-sharing program that
Skype's co-founders invented five years ago -- the
system can scale easily and inexpensively. What To Look For: Expect Skype to focus on its prepaid products like SkypeOut and Skype Voicemail. Also, look for the company to launch its product on dual-mode cellular/WiFi handsets by the end of the year and target its solution to the mobile enterprise market. |
