Fresh off an appearance at Tony Perkins' AlwaysOn conference via SkypeVideo, Skype CEO Niklas Zennstrom will give a videoconference keynote speech at the Internet Telephony Conference & Expo in Los Angeles in October. I initially thought Zennstrom was going to appear in person but he's apparently avoiding the U.S. until his lawyers can extract him from the U.S. music industry's lawsuit against Kazaa.

Has 8x8 Inc. turned the corner? The company said it added 16K VOIP customers in the fiscal first-quarter to bring its subscriber base to 73,000 while revenue nearly tripled to $6 million from $2.1 million. The company, however, posted a $5.1 million loss. I'm not sure how to read these results. If you're an optimist, the good news is 8x8 attracted nearly as many subscribers in Q1 2005 than it did in all of 2004, while Q1 revenue was the highest in five years. Then again, it is hard to get too excited about a company losing as much money as it generates in sales. The company, whose shares have not performed well this year, is currently worth $107-million. Pulling out my handy-dandy envelope, this suggests Vonage is worth $900-million (not including a premium for its brand, market leadership and takeover/IPO prospects). You have to wonder about 8x8's future. Is a destined to become a small, niche player or a takeover candidate for someone looking to get into the VOIP market with a well-known brand? If investors vote with the feet, I'd say the jury is still out on the company's future.
For more thoughts on Vonage's potential value, check out my post earlier this month when the Vonage-Bell South rumors started to rumble.

A few months ago, I wrote about iRobot, which among other things makes a robot that can simultaneously vacuum, scrub and dry hardwood and tile floors automatically. Today, the firm said it has filed for an IPO led by Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan.

Not sure what to make of this news but Skype has slashed its SkypeOut rates by about 15% to more than 30 countries. SkypeOut, which is marking its first year anniversary, is also being offered to six new countries at 1.7 Euro cents a minute. What's perhaps more interesting is SkypeOut prices to Saudi Arabia, Papua New Guinea, Oman, Lichtenstein and Haiti are climbing - in some cases by more than 100% - apparently due to "increases from our suppliers". Strategically, I wonder what the price adjustments suggest? Has SkypeOut usage plateaued, and it requires a jump-start to attract more users? Do the price increases mean business is getting a little more complicated now that Skype has to deal with incumbent carriers to connect to the PSTN? Skype says SkypeOut has attracted more than 1.8 million people but it does provide a break-down on metrics such as ARPU or average number of calls per user. For all anyone knows, SkypeOut could be regularly used by only 100,000 people while the remaining 1.7 million people have only used it once.

Hats off to the Motorola P.R. team for getting people excited about its "Q" smartphone, which is already being billed as a Blackberry-killer. The Globe & Mail jumped hard on the "Q" bandwagon today with a big story on the front of the business section - completing with a nice quote from Rob Enderle that "Q" is an "aggressive push toward dethroning RIM". Before anyone and everyone gets ahead of themselves, we all need to take a deep breath and spend some time to put things in context. First, "Q" will not be hitting the market for at least another six months, and you have to think RIM will be launching some cool new devices before the end of the year. Second, let's look at where "Q" may have its biggest impact. It may not be RIM that should worry but Palm because the "Q" looks a lot like a Treo. Three, "Q" may have good curb appeal but corporate users don't care much about looks; they're into performance. RIM has been successful because its technology resonates with corporate IT buyers: cost, battery life and durability. Finally, RIM has a licensing deal with Motorola so it's entirely possible there will be a "Q" featuring Blackberry software. As RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie told the Globe yesterday "There's no knockout punch here. This is not a game changer. This is just a new design". Engadget, by the way, has several photographs comparing "Q" with the Treo and the Blackberry.