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- Why Microsoft is Buying Skype for $8.5 Billion
Skype CEO Tony Bates
Updated at 12 midnight: Microsoft has bought Skype for $8.5 billion, in an all cash deal. The deal closed a few hours ago.
is close to finalizing a deal to buy Skype for between $7 billion to $8 billion. The Wall Street Journal confirmed the news after we had first reported it yesterday. The announcement is likely to come out later today or tomorrow morning, according to several reports. Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft is said to be a big champion of the deal, the largest in the history of the company. Ballmer and Skype CEO Tony Bates will host a press conference in a few hours.Skype has been up for sale for some time, thanks to some very antsy investors. My sources indicated that the both eBay and Silver Lake Partners have been getting nervous about the delayed initial public offering and have been pushing for a sale of Skype. Facebook and Google were said to be earlier dance partners for Skype, and Microsoft was a late entrant and is now close to walking away with the prize.
It won’t surprise me if Microsoft comes in for major heat on this decision to buy Skype — and the software company could always botch this purchase, as it often does when it buys a company. The Skype team is also full of hired guns who are likely to move on to the next opportunity rather than dealing with the famed Microsoft bureaucracy.
I also don’t believe that Facebook and Google were serious buyers. Google, with its Google Voice offering, doesn’t really need Skype. In essence, I feel that Microsoft was bidding against itself. Even then, I personally think this is a bet worth taking, especially for a company that has been left out in the cold for so long.
- Skype gives Microsoft a boost in the enterprise collaboration market, thanks to Skype's voice, video and sharing capabilities, especially when competing with Cisco and Google.
- It gives Microsoft a working relationship with carriers, many of them looking to partner with Skype as they start to transition to LTE-based networks.
- It would give them a must-have application/service that can help with the adoption of the future versions of Windows Mobile operating system.
- However, the biggest reason for Microsoft to buy Skype is Windows Phone 7 (Mobile OS) and Nokia. The software giant needs a competitive offering to Google Voice and Apple’s emerging communication platform, Facetime.
Guess Who’s The Big Winner
The biggest winner of this deal could actually be Facebook. The Palo Alto-based social networking giant had little or no chance of buying Skype. Had it been public, it would have been a different story. With Microsoft, it gets the best of both worlds — it gets access to Skype assets (Microsoft is an investor in Facebook) and it gets to keep Skype away from Google.
Facebook needs Skype badly. Among other things, it needs to use Skype’s peer-to-peer network to offer video and voice services to the users of Facebook Chat. If the company had to use conventional methods and offer voice and video service to its 600 million plus customers, the cost and overhead of operating the infrastructure would be prohibitive.
Facebook can also help Skype get more customers for its SkypeOut service, and it can have folks use Facebook Credits to pay for Skype minutes. Skype and Facebook are working on a joint announcement and you can expect it shortly.
Why Did Skype Want To Sell?
Skype had filed for an IPO and was going to do about a billion dollars in revenues and was on its way to becoming profitable. So why sell? Silver Lake and eBay were both getting impatient and wanted to lock in their profits. Some sources also believe that Skype’s revenues had stalled.
The company had bet heavily on is video sharing service. The premium version of video calling and sharing was a way for Skype to increase its average revenue per user and move into the enterprise market. However, given Skype’s DNA is that of a consumer Internet company, the challenges are not a surprise.
So Who Made What?
- Using the $8.5 billion price as the likely sale price, eBay gets $2.55 billion for its 30 percent stake in Skype. So in the end, eBay did make money on the Skype deal.
The Skype Founders
- Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, the co-founders with their 14-percent stake, take home about $1.19 billion. Damn, these guys know how to double dip!
- Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) own 56 percent of the company and that stake is worth $4.76 billion.
- Andreessen Horowitz had 3 percent of the deal and made $205 million profit on their $50 million initial investment.
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Переслать - Quick Look: Henge Dock for MacBook and MacBook Pro
With MacBooks getting closer and closer to desktop performance, some may find themselves in need of a docking station. PC docks about, but there are few Mac options. One of those options is the Henge Dock. These docking stations are designed for MacBooks and MacBook Pros.
The model I got my hands on is for the 17-in MacBook Pro. Inside the box, you will find the plastic base along with the following cables: Ethernet, FireWire 800, USB Extenders (3) and audio (2). Not included are a MagSafe power adapter or a DisplayPort cable. You can order DisplayPort extenders and adapters from the Henge Docks site that are guaranteed to have enough slack for the dock. I would recommend buying another power adapter since removing the one used in the dock becomes rather tedious if you do it frequently. Assembly is a little tricky, but the ability to choose which ports you want to extend is worth it. It took about a half hour to assemble everything and the end result seems pretty secure.
I started by feeding the wires through with the dock laying on its side. After about half the connectors were hooked up, I flipped everything up to its normal position and hooked up the remaining connectors.
One thing that was confusing is why the audio connectors are shaped to fit into a particular slot on the dock but the other end of the cables aren’t marked as to which is headphone or line-in. Just remember which you feed through which hole.
The hardest part was getting the DisplayPort to VGA adapter to fit. I would recommend purchasing one of the official Henge Docks adapters or at least their DisplayPort extender, it will save you some trouble.
When it’s all put together, it works rather well. The manual states that you should never rock or carry the dock around with a MacBook docked. You’ll notice right away that it can be top-heavy, so place it on secure surface that doesn’t wobble to avoid accidents.
The only real drawbacks to the Henge Docks system are that you can’t access the power button or the FaceTime camera. If you accidentally shutdown the MacBook, you’ll have to un-dock the computer to open it up and power it back on. Since running the MacBook in clamshell mode is the whole point of a dock, you’ll have to get yourself an external USB webcam if you want to be able to do video chat.
With limited options for docking stations, the Henge Dock does everything it claims to. If you want to pretty up your desk, and you frequently switch between desktop and portable configurations with your MacBook, the Henge Dock is an idea companion that will save you many unpleasant plugging and unplugging rituals.
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Переслать - Mailbox Adds Gmail to Your Mac's Menu Bar
Looking for a way to access your Gmail acount from your Mac’s menu bar? Zentertain’s Mailbox is a lightweight app that does just that, adding an envelope icon to your menu bar that, when clicked, pops open a window containing your Gmail inbox. You can read emails, reply to conversations and compose new emails from within that window, all without having to open up your browser.
The first time you click the icon, you’ll be asked for your login details before being taken to your inbox. Eagle-eyed users of the mobile-optimized version of Gmail for the iPhone will probably be very familiar with the version of the web app that pops up; it looks like Mailbox is effectively just a browser window, and the app is tricking Google into thinking that it is serving the site to a mobile device. That’s not necessarily a bad thing: the iPhone-optimized version of Gmail is nicely-designed, provides access to Gmail’s more advanced features (Priority Inbox, Google Buzz, labels, stars, etc.) and works well on smaller displays — like the window that Mailbox uses to display your inbox on your desktop.
As a very simple, lightweight app that provides speedy desktop access to your Gmail account via your menu bar, it works pretty well. However, if you’re a Google Apps for Domains Gmail user, you’re out of luck: unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to work properly with those accounts. Additionally, there are a couple of extra (albeit probably technically hard to implement) features that would turn it from merely being a convenient way to access the Gmail website into a much more useful application. Robust offline access would be really handy, and make the app more of an equivalent to full-featured desktop email clients like Outlook and Apple Mail. Some kind of notifications system for new and unread emails would also be useful — perhaps having a count of unread emails next to the app’s icon in the menu bar, and also having the option of Growl notifications for new emails.
Mailbox can be downloaded from the App Store. It’s free, and requires Mac OS X 10.6 or later
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Переслать - Is the iPad Launching the Two-Screen Revolution?
iPad owners are starting to see more and more apps that encourage the use of the device in conjunction with other screens. I’m not talking about remote desktop apps that allow the iPad to act as a mirror of other machines; I specifically mean apps that allow the iPad to act as a supplemental screen for another, providing separate information that adds to the overall experience.
Apple is paving the way for true, two-screen viewing in a way that no company has been able to do before now. And it’s a change that could benefit traditional content providers just as much, if not more than new players on the scene. Movie studios, cable companies, and gaming hardware manufacturers should all be looking at the iPad not as competition, but as a new route to customer engagement.
Content providers that are taking the hint are seeing benefits. Real Racing 2 HD is an early mover in the dual-screen gaming space, and it’s seeing the rewards. The game is currently at No. 57 in the top paid apps charts on the iTunes App Store, and it garnered lots of media attention and downloads with its innovative approach that used the iPad screen in addition to full HD output on a connected television. The game displays supplemental information on the iPad 2, which also serves as a motion controller for the primary racing action displayed on the TV.
It doesn’t feel awkward, contrived, or unnecessary, and that’s because it doesn’t try to compete with the much larger display for a user’s attention. It delivers just the right amount of information in just the right way so as to inform without distracting.
Ryan wrote about the new VH1 Co-Star iPad app last week . The app acts as a companion for VH1 programming, offering content-specific info and trivia, as well as curated social streams from Twitter and Facebook. It’s an app that aims to capitalize on the fact that social network interaction during broadcasts is becoming more and more common. It’s a great way to encourage engagement, which, when successful, can turn casual channel surfers into dedicated repeat viewers. It can also be a great avenue for making money from targeted ads since it gives networks a great idea of what viewers are watching what content. A second-display experience makes even more sense when it comes to televised sports programming, where a supplemental screen can provide the kind of statistical info and league scores and highlights without interrupting the main action.
A third way that iPads show promise as second-screen devices is as control surfaces for complex applications. Adobe recently showed off its Photoshop touch apps, and the company is releasing a public SDK so other developers can come up with equally innovative ways to use the small screen as a control or enhancement device for what’s going on a much larger computer screen. There’s great potential for similar implementations for other media manipulation applications (like DJ and film editing software), as well as for supplementary computer control surfaces in general.
The iPad’s success is perhaps most impressive because it’s done so well without impacting Apple’s other lines of business; people aren’t buying an iPad instead of a Mac or iPod. Rather, if anything, they’re getting them in addition to those things. Likewise, the iPad need not pose a threat to other means of media consumption. Instead, the tablet can act as a way to make users spend more, not less time with their existing entertainment devices. Companies hoping to use the iPad to achieve this goal need to be smart about development, but it’s a far better prospect than simply putting your head in the sand and hoping the iPad simply goes about its business with little or no negative impact on your business.
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Переслать - iPhone Holding on Against Android as RIM Collapses
According to analytics firm comScore , smartphone OS market share continues trending Google’s way in the U.S. Counting some 75 million mobile subscribers for the three-month rolling average ending in March, Android climbed to 34.7 percent, up from 28.7. That six-percentage-point increase is less than Android’s growth in the previous quarter, but still big. Apple saw a little growth, from 25 to 25.5 percent, which was about double that of the previous three-month period. The rise can possibly be attributed to some 2.2 million Verizon iPhones sold during the quarter, though the collapse of RIM is probably having a larger impact.
The BlackBerry maker saw its share decline to 27.1 percent, down 4.5 percent from three months ago. To put that in perspective, a year ago RIM accounted for about 40 percent of smartphone OS market share in the U.S. It’s hard to imagine anything worse than that, except for Microsoft and Palm, both of which have seen their market share halved from a year ago. While HP remains flat at 2.8 percent of the market, Microsoft dipped from 7.7 to 7.5 percent, suggesting Windows Phone 7 has failed to stop the company’s decline.
What this means for Apple is that, simply by not failing like its competitors, and even without a new iPhone in June, Apple will pass RIM in terms of U.S. smartphone OS market share this summer. (It already did so in the global market.) Not surprisingly, the same can be said for handset share, too.
Apple is closing on RIM in the race among handset OEMs, with the iPhone climbing from 6.8 percent to 7.9 percent in the last three months. Currently fourth in the U.S., Apple will pass RIM in the next three months, as the Canadian company saw its own share of handsets decline from 8.5 to 8.4 percent. In third, Motorola dropped nearly a full percentage point, down to 15.8 percent. If current trends continue — and there’s nothing to suggest they won’t — Apple could be the third-largest manufacturer of phones in the U.S. by this time next year.
Going back to Android’s dominance in smartphone operating systems, it should be noted that including tablets like the iPad and handhelds like the iPod touch, the numbers change drastically. According to comScore, as of just last month, the combined installed base of iOS users was some 59 percent greater than that of Android users. That’s important because, to date, Android tablets have failed to significantly impact the tablet market. Currently, there is no competition for the iPod touch, though Samsung is launching the Galaxy Player against Apple’s media player supermajority. Good luck with that.
The takeaway here is that accounting for mobile operating systems across devices, instead of just on smartphones, Google’s chances of achieving the kind of dominance in mobile computing that Microsoft did with traditional computers is much less likely. That means the iOS platform won’t become a niche market the way the Mac did in the late ’90s, and that’s what really matters for Apple’s customers.
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Переслать - Apple's AirPlay Arrives on Android: DoubleTwist
Android smartphones and tablets can now stream music, videos and photos to AppleTV over Wi-Fi using the doubleTwist application. The software is already known as an iTunes alternative for Android devices due to its ability to sync media libraries. While doubleTwist is free, the streaming functionality is part of the $4.99 upgrade called doubleTwist AirSync. The latest update of the paid app adds support for Apple’s AirPlay: the wireless method used to stream media from Apple mobile devices to either Mac computers or an AppleTV connected to an HDTV.
Prior to the most recent software update, doubleTwist AirSync could already stream media over Wi-Fi, but not to Apple devices. Instead, the software enabled Android devices to pipe music and video to either Microsoft’s Xbox 360 or Sony’s PlayStation 3 gaming consoles. In a recent video, I demonstrated how this worked by streaming video and music from a Samsung Galaxy Tab to my HDTV and Xbox 360. After updating my doubleTwist software this morning, I tested the Wi-Fi streaming to the same television, but this time through the AppleTV.
The application works as advertised and was simple to configure, as it only required one checkbox to enable the AirPlay streaming. Just like on my iPad 2, tapping a single button during music or video playback shoots media content to the AppleTV. Both the Android device and AppleTV must be on the same Wi-Fi network for the process to work. Video playback is smooth, and the sound quality of music files is quite good — no different from what I can tell when using an iPad or iPod touch. I did notice album art didn’t appear in my testing, which could either be a glitch on my system or functionality not yet supported by doubleTwist.
While Apple’s AirPlay is a proprietary protocol, the company does license its use for third-party applications and non-Apple hardware such as external speakers. Unless the doubleTwist folks reverse engineered the protocol — company founder Jon Lech Johansen is famous for cracking the encryption on DVDs and Apple’s FairPlay – doubleTwist users shouldn’t fear that Apple can “break” the functionality in the future. And while doubleTwist itself still shows some odd nuances and room for improvement, the software continues to get better as a more complete “iTunes for Android” solution.
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Переслать - Apple Wins as Condé Nast Signs on With iPad Subscriptions
Condé Nast is the latest publisher to announce digital subscriptions for Apple’s iPad, and the deal represents a big victory for Cupertino. The publishers will begin offering The New Yorker via iPad subscription today, with seven other titles to follow by the end of May.
Condé Nast is the second major magazine publisher to sign on with Apple in-app subscriptions. Hearst announced a deal just last week, and while Time Inc. appears to be the last official holdout among the big publishers, it did just announce a deal to bring iPad editions of its titles to print subscribers for free. That deal had to come with a cost, and I maintain my belief that the company has agreed to fall in line with Apple’s in-app subscription terms at a later date.
All three companies have taken slightly different approaches to Apple’s tablet platform, but none came out immediately in support of Apple’s proposed in-app subscription terms, which required that Apple take its 30 percent cut and maintain full control of the subscriber relationship. Customer info, which is like gold to magazine companies because of its value for marketing efforts, is only given to magazine companies through Apple subscriptions if a customer opts in, which seems unlikely to happen often given the way iOS asks a user to share said info (see below).
Of the three major magazine publishers, Condé Nast’s approach seems best designed to benefit consumers. That’s because in addition to offering reasonable rates for in-app subscriptions ($59.99 for one year of The New Yorker, or $5.99 for a one month, four-issue subscription), the publisher is also planning to offer free access to iPad content for existing print subscribers. Hearst will offer in-app subscriptions, but those will be distinct from print subscriptions, as the company sees both as separate revenue streams. Time Inc. as mentioned, has so far only announced access of free in-app content for existing subscribers, with no digital subscriptions.
Apple’s ability to win over these publishers (and a growing number of smaller publishers, too) will ultimately be great for consumers, many of whom had balked at high per-issue pricing even on magazines apps that were widely praised, like Condé Nast’s Wired. A reasonable pricing structure should attract more subscribers, which should in turn benefit publishers, too, but it remains to be seen whether that payoff will be enough to shore up the magazine industry’s declining fortunes.
News Corp.’s The Daily lost $10 million over its first three months on the App Store, though it also saw more than 800,000 downloads. News Corp. has said its losses are due mostly to expensive initial investment costs, and it’s worth noting that The Daily had an extensive free trial period and was only a paid app for fraction of those first three months. Still, it does raise questions regarding the iPad’s ability to make digital periodical publishing profitable.
Affordable in-app subscriptions will provide a much-needed shot in the arm for the iPad magazine in general, but long-lasting value still depends on innovative and effective use of the platform and high-quality content. One-time subscribers are better than one-time buyers, but still more valuable repeat customers will only come when publishers nail down the one-two punch of truly outstanding package and content, something which has been tricky so far for iOS periodicals.
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Переслать - Apple Passes Google as Most Valuable Brand
Apple is now the most valuable brand in the world, according to a report by Millward Brown. Apple surpassed Google, ending that company’s four-year reign as the top brand, thanks to an 84-percent increase in value during the past year. The single most likely suspect for the change? Apple’s iPad.
The iPad debuted last year and sold very well for a brand new class of device, beating all analyst expectations. The iPad 2 continues to dominate the tablet market; all the resulting revenue is additive for Apple, and so far hasn’t seemed to have cannibalized Mac revenue, as some suspected it would.
Apple’s total value, as measured by Millward Brown (which is based on “financial data combined with consumer measures of brand equity,” according to the company), is $153 billion, while Google’s is $112 billion. Rounding out the top five are IBM at $101 billion, McDonald’s at $81 billion, and Microsoft at $78 billion. All experienced some growth in value during the year except for Google. Apple’s 84-percent rise easily outstripped that of any other company in the top 10 most valuable brands. McDonald’s was next closest, with a 23-percent increase in brand value.
Even if Apple continues to cede global smartphone market share to Google, which isn’t guaranteed to happen (Apple still has plenty of markets to expand to before it matches Android’s reach), its commanding lead in the consumer tablet sector will give it the ability to stay well ahead in brand value. And because Apple controls both hardware and software for its products, it has greater control over consumer perception of its brand, which has an effect on these rankings.
It’s worth noting, though, that the same study also found AT&T is the most valuable telecom brand. AT&T ranked seventh overall in the top 100, despite significant continued negative customer perception because of the company’s spotty coverage in major metropolitan areas like New York City and San Francisco.
While brand value may not always accurately reflect the experience of customers, it does provide an interesting picture of how companies that aren’t often compared to one another measure up. The top 10 brands, despite being from very different industries (with the exception of the many tech and telecom brands represented) are all ones whose logos most would instantly recognize. The only exception is likely China Mobile, which came in ninth and leads 12 Chinese brands among the top 100.
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