Skype case study

Résumé du document

Introduction: With the acquisition of Skype by Microsoft this month, Skype continues its growth and consolidate its number one rank on VOIP services around the world. There are new services offered to customers each year and Skype tries to attract more businesses in order to adopt their innovations. This is why I think it is interesting to focus on services offered by Skype for businesses. Thus, I will focus on business users (a new market segment) in France. The goal is to grow services and revenue. This will be market penetration and gaining market share.

Company background: Skype is a software application which allows people to make voice and video calls and to chat over the web. Skype was founded in 2003 by Niklas Zennstrom who comes from Sweden, and by Janus Friis who comes from Denmark. In April 2003, the two domain names: Skype.com and Skype.net were registered. The first public beta version was released in August 2003.

Thanks to Skype, you can call other users for free. However, if you call traditional telephones and cell phones you have to pay, but it is cheaper than the traditional communication systems. Skype offers also instant messaging, file transfer, and videoconferencing. Today, Skype has 663 million registered users. Their network is operated by Skype Limited and their headquarters are in Luxembourg. On October 2005, eBay purchased Skype for 2.6 billion dollars. In May 2011, Microsoft Corporation acquired Skype Communications, for 8.5 billion dollars.

Extraits

[...] These offers are Skype Manager and Skype Connect. Sky Manager allows companies to centralize the creation and the management of Skype accounts for all the employees. They can supervise the allocation of credits for each account and be careful to what is spent. Moreover, with Skype manager, you have access to the videoconference service and you can decide who has the right to use it in your company. Employees do not have to worry about their Skype credit or functionalities anymore. [...]

[...] They can also generate revenue using advertising. Now let's talk about the payment on Skype. First of all, there are two options, and customer has to choose between them regarding several criteria. It depends on the number of calls they make per month and the length of their average out calls PC-to-phone call, they can save some money if they choose the good option, Skype "Pay As You Go" Credit or a Skype Monthly Subscription.[8] . Conclusion . To conclude, Skype has a great potential to success at long term in France, but they have to advertise more and to continue to innovate in order to keep their advance against their competitors. [...]

[...] Skype, telecommunications without barriers. Concerning the magazine advertising we will have to choose between several magazines. Here is some magazines which needs to be studied in order to define if it would be a great opportunity to put an advertising: 01 Business and technologies, Action future, Fortune, Investir, Action commercial, Chef d'entreprise, commerce, trends, capital, challenges, commerce, creation d'entreprise, decisions, e commerce, entreprendre, Harvard business Review, Horizon Croissance, Informations enterprise, La Tribune, Marketing Direct, Marketing, Office mag, Relation Client, and The Economist. [...]

[...] However, calls from SkypeOut are charged at a minute rate. Moreover, Skype for Salesforce includes also computer telephony adapter in order to use click to call for telephones of customers and partners listed in Salesforce application. Scott Miller, Director of business development with Skype said: more and more people around the world use Skype to talk to their friends and family, they are increasingly adopting Skype in the workplace to also talk to colleagues and customers” . He also said: now offer the tools to integrate Skype communication with the salesforce.com experience via the AppExchange. [...]

[...] Thus, the challenge today is to create the same keen interest for businesses in France. In order to better understand the business French market, these figures will allow us to figure out the proportions between all the companies: Today, there are 493 French companies with more than 2000 employees between 500 and between 200 and between 50 and between 10 and between 1 and and with no employees.[3] Skype target every size of companies because their services can fit a very large amount of people in the business world. [...]