Skype's 2nd Quarter Growth In-Line

EBay announced 2nd quarter earnings yesterday, and with the earnings they announced that Skype had achieved $136M in 2nd quarter revenue, right in line with the "realistic case" revenue forecast I put out back on March 8th.  Skype's subscriber growth is slightly behind my forecast, but their revenue-per-user is slightly ahead of forecast.  Here is how Skype has done the past three quarters:

SKYPE STATS	Q4 2007	Q1 2008	Q2 2008
Borderless Communicator "Real Users"*	27,206,646	31,741,318	32,225,000
Quarterly Revenue ($millions)	$         115	$         126	$         136
Quarterly Revenue Per User	$        4.23	$        3.97	$        4.22

The Borderless Communicator "Real Users" stat comes from Hudson Barton's Borderless Communicator blog, here.  Mr. Barton tracks how many of Skype's reported registered users really used the service on a regular basis, so his "Real Users" stat is a much more reliable indicator of how many people really use the service.  If I have one gripe with Skype, it's that they subbornly cling to reporting "registered users", when everybody knows that a good number of those registrations are dormant.  I myself have three Skype accounts, and only one of them ever gets used.

Overall, Skype's revenue and subscriber growth are slowing down in the 2nd quarter.  The same thing happened last summer, though, so I factored that into the forecast since this could just be a seasonal pattern.

Here's the March 8th forecast for 2008 for Skype:

	Q1 2008	Q2 2008	Q3 2008	Q4 2008
Quarterly Revenue per "Real User"	$        3.97	$        4.18	$        4.18	$        4.18
Total "Real Users"	31,741,318	32,608,275	33,110,482	36,410,482
Quarterly Skype Revenue ($M)	$         126	$         136	$         138	$         152

If the rest of they year plays out according to this forecast, with big jump in 4th quarter users, then Skype will be at about $553M in revenue for 2008.