Skype growing by 380,000 users a DAY!

Last year, the talk was all about how eBay would dump Skype, without losing too much money in the process. However, at the launch of Skype 4.0 in Singapore this week, Skype announced that it now has 405 million users and that it is growing at an amazing rate of 380,000 users a day.

Last year, Skype earned a staggering $550 MILLION in revenue – This after 8 straight quarters in profit!

Skype 4.0

Skype 4.0 came out this month and offers a few new features; including the promise of improved call quality, thanks to what they call; “super wideband audio.” I am using Skype 4.0 on one of my machines and have not noticed any call quality improvements – though my experience of the service is already extremely good. Maybe those with lower quality connections will notice a difference?

Will Skype keep growing during the recession?

If you listen to Skype Asia’s Vice President Dan Neary, the answer is yes. Here’s what he said;

“there has never been a better time than now for enterprises, particularly small to medium businesses, to consider switching to Skype for their communications. In this type of environment people are looking for cost savings wherever they can find them, they are looking to ‘recession-proof’ their businesses.”

“They don’t want to fly from A to B, they want to do video-conferencing. More and more, this offering is becoming applicable for people in business.”

Anything that can save people and businesses money, has a massive edge in the current economy.