Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Skype Shakeup - Quick Reprise

When I picked up on Andy Abramson's post about Niklas Zennstrom's resignation from Skype yesterday morning, I couldn't find anything else posted out there in the blogosphere or mainstream press.

Of course, as the day went on, that changed big time, and the story got the full attention it deserved from many sources. If you're just jumping into this story, Skype Journal is as good a place as any to start, especially Jim Courtney's insightful running commentary yesterday and today.

I often speak with Business Week about stories like this, but was not reachable when the call came, so I was out of luck. However, I did speak later with Olga Kharif, who wrote a separate post about our chat on the Business Week Tech Beat page, and just thought I'd add that to mix.

There's been lots of talk that an IPO is the magic bullet for Skype, and I think there's a lot of merit to that. Or how about going to Yahoo, fresh off some interesting acquisitions in Zimbra and BlueLithium?

I still like my longshot idea the best - Apple. Just over two years ago, I posted that Apple would be a great fit for Skype - I'd call it Skapple, and together, they could have the ultimate mobile device --- the Skypod. That may not come to pass, but I'll tell you what --- the Google phone - which was cited in that 2005 blog post is just around the corner now, and it sure bears a lot of similarity.



While we're on the topic of heavily troubled VoIP plays, I was interviewed the other day by IT Business Edge about Vonage. Can anybody make a buck in this business?



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1 comment:

Jon Arnold said...

Posted by: Andrew

Skapple? it sounds like a disease.. I have a bad case of the Skapple.