14 DAY TRIAL // At the eComm Conference in San Francisco, Skype's CTO (Chief Technology Officer), Mr. Jonathan Rosenberg waived the 560 million users mark that Skype has recently passed, offering some general statistics about Skype's usage among Internauts.
The figure leaves Facebook in the dust for web supremacy, at a distance greater than 160 million users behind Skype. While one service handles P2P connections for desktop clients and the other runs a social networking platform, it shows how much Skype has grown since its launch in August 2003, just six months before Facebook.
Other interesting details offered at eComm include the fact that the company added over 39 million users in the fourth quarter of 2009 only, while the number of Skype-to-Skype call minutes totaled around 36.1 billion in that same period. This brings the total number of Skype-to-Skype call minutes to just over 250 billion.
Skype also handles over 23 million logged in users at peak moments, while 35% of the general number of customers use it for business projects and business communications.
The service also strikes fear in the hearts of mobile operators around the globe, achieving 12% of the world’s total international calling minutes, more than 51% better than in 2008. This was previously noticed by Russian operators, which tried to take some actions against the service, with support from Kremlin legislature itself.
Nevertheless, Skype management didn't take those incidents to heart, showing some more insight in the communications market, and acknowledging the trend for video support in mobile calls by providing and enhancing its video support. At the end of the 2009 fourth quarter, 36% of all Skype-to-Skype calls handled video feeds as well as sound.
At the moment Skype is supported in 29 languages, being used in almost every country around the globe.
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