Skype Announcements from CES 2011

CES brings together all of the major players in consumer electronics and services. Skype doesn’t want to be left out of all the hubbub and today announced some big-time news for Luxembourg-based Internet telephony Company.

First of all, the company is acquiring the popular mobile-based Internet video company Qik. Qik is a service that lets you stream live video from your mobile device onto the Interenet. More recently, on Android phones such as T-Mobile’s MyTouch 4G, Qik is the service that enables video chat. Skype buying Qik is a huge move and will likely mean Skype will have a much larger stake in Android-based video calling.

Skype also announced the availability of more calling options for your living room. The company is coming out with Blu-Ray players made by Sony and Panasonic that support a special camera that will plug into to your player and sit atop your TV for big-screen, high-definition video calling.

The company has also released more statistics on how people are using Skype. They serve 520 million calling minutes per day now which is an astounding number. Also, routhly 41% of Skype calls now involve video, meaning folks all over the world are using Skype’s amazing video and audio quality to stay connected. Finally, Skype made it known that it is now serving 25% of all international calling minutes worldwide. Not bad for a company which only was useful to nerds in front of laptops just a few short years ago.

On the business side, Skype announced an IPO wich means any person can buy shares on the stock market. Initial Public Offerings have been few and far between in the last few years, so for Skype to go down this road is pretty amazing and says a lot to how confident Skype’s Executive team feels at this point in time.

I’m attending CES now and I will stop by the Skype booth to get a demo of these new TVs and Blu-Ray players…if you have a question you’d like to me to ask of the Skype team, leave a comment below – or simply SMS me at +1 503 334 2574.

6 comments on “Skype Announcements from CES 2011
  1. Pingback: Tweets that mention Skype Announcements from CES 2011 » Techcraver.com | Craving Tech, Craving Life! -- Topsy.com

Say something

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked with a grey bar.

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>