The Hidden Details In Skype IPO

Today, Google announced a GMail App enabling voice calls for free in the US and Canada - from computer to phone connections.  This is a direct aim at Skype's market. However, the big opportunity is in the enterprise sector which is where Skype is headed. Skype is hooking up with corporate networks and connecting with companies like ShoreTel.  

Here’s the key passage from Skype’s IPO filing:

We believe the business communications market represents a large opportunity for Skype. Approximately 37% of over 40,000 of our connected users surveyed in the first quarter of 2010 told us that they use our product platform occasionally or often for business-related purposes. We believe there is a significant opportunity to better serve the communications needs of the small and medium enterprise segment, as well as larger enterprise customers, by focusing on user needs in this market and developing additional products specifically tailored to business users. We plan to address this opportunity through the following initiatives:

• Introduce new business-focused products. We have released two products to better serve and grow revenue in the enterprise market: Skype Manager, which allows businesses to create Skype accounts, purchase our paid products and manage and pay for the use of Skype products by their employees, and Skype Connect, which allows businesses to connect their private telephone branch exchange (PBX) over the Internet to Skype’s peer-to-peer user network to achieve low-cost calling. Skype Connect already has over 2,400 active global customers, and has already been certified by Avaya, Cisco, SIPfoundry and ShoreTel, among others, as interoperable with their products.
• Build a new sales force, support team and management tools. We are investing to develop our business features and functionality and are exploring options such as adding more robust technical support, video and data conferencing, and collaboration solutions. We are also growing our business sales team to be able to focus on selling these products in the business market.

The traditional phone companies should be worried with competition from both Skype and Google.