Skype's steady march to become a fee-based telecom service took another step forward today with the launch of Skype Voicemail. With each day, Skype is more like a traditional VOIP service provider rather than P2P software. With 42 million registered users - a number growing by 150,000 a day - and growing sources of revenue, Skype seems on its way to becoming a real business and/or a takeover candidate.
I'm not sure about the Skype-Yahoo rumors but it can only be a matter of time before Skype's growing role in the telecom market and its large user base brings someone out of the woodwork. So who would buy Skype and how much would it cost them? I would think the potential suitors include Yahoo, Google, AOL and even Microsoft. For anyone with an IM client, Skype seems like a logical choice to add integrated voice functionality. Obviously, Google doesn't have an IM service yet but a move into telephony seems like a natural route.
As for a selling price, you have to gues-stimate given Skype doesn't disclose revenue or ARPU. A starting point would be Skype's $18-million venture capital round earlier this year. This had to be based more on the value of the company's registered users which includes about one million subscribers who have paid for SkypeIn or SkypeOut at least once, than Skype's revenue, which was about $20-million last year. So what metric do you use: the number of registered users or revenue, or a combination of both? Vonage is worth about $2,000 a user but it has ARPU of $20 to $25 a month. Let's assume Skype has ARPU of $0.10 (42 million users x $1.20 a year = $50-million of revenue in 2005). If Vonage has an estimated valuation of $1 billion to $1.5-billion, my totally unscientific, back-of-the-napkin number-crunching suggests Skype is worth $250-million to $300-million. The next question is who's willing to make a move on Skype, and the patience of CEO Niklas Zennstrom and investors such as Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

A colleague of mine, Kevin Restivo, has an analysis piece in today's National Post about Research in Motion's ongoing (never ending?) dispute with NTP. He believes NTP's group of investors simply want to squeeze more money out of RIM - as if US$450 million isn't enough. The dispute, which has been pushed back to a U.S. court, is apparently focused over RIM's ability to sub-license the technology it has licensed from NTP. RIM insists it has agreement to do it; NTP thinks overwise. Rob Hyndman also weighs into the debate by citing press releases issued by the two companies in March. He suggests RIM and NTP both appeared to think they had a deal done. At times like this, I wish I was a corporate IP lawyer given RIM's legal fees are running into the millions of dollars.

In the wake of Nortel COO Gary Daichendt's abrupt departure last week, an intriguing issue raised in an analysis by BusinessWeek is the buyer vs. seller scenario. Ever since Bill Owens took over as Nortel's CEO last April, he has made it clear Nortel will be a "consolidater rather than a consolidatee". This view was evident when Nortel spent $448-million in cash to buy PEC Solutions Inc. - a mid-tier systems integrator focused on the U.S. government. What may have created the difference in opinion between Owens and Daichendt is whether acquisitions are the right strategy. It could have been that Daichendt's strategic plans involved the sale of struggling business units - something Owens and Nortel's board have little or no interest in adopting. If you're Daichendt and realize a fundamental part of your approach to Nortel stands in stark contrast to the board and CEO, you either suck it up and stick around until the board is overhauled later this month at the AGM, or you pack your bags and head back to California.