Microsoft recently confirmed that it has reached an agreement to buy Skype for $8.5 billion, which is currently the largest acquisition of the company. As a software application, Skype allows users to make voice calls and chats over the Internet. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free, while calls to both traditional landline telephones and mobile phones can be made for a fee using a debit-based user account system. Skype has also become popular for its additional features which include instant messaging, file transfer, and video conferencing. Skype has 663 million registered users as of 2010.
Obviously, Microsoft will try to make this acquisition worthy, because the giant of the PC era is currently suffering from very tough period. In a post PC era, Microsoft cannot dominate the market by using a single product like Windows or Office as in the old days, the company did not show a strong performance on internet business, instead, Google and Facebook took most of the marketshare, Microsoft cannot even take a breather under the huge pressure of social networking sites, Microsoft"s Online Services Division has been continually loss-making since 2006 and in Q1 2011 it lost $726 million. This follows a loss of $2.5 billion for the year 2010.
Even in its comfort zone, PC, for the first time in 20 years, Apple surpassed Microsoft in Q1 2011 quarterly profits and revenues due to a slowdown in PC sales and continuing huge losses in Microsoft"s Online Services Division, which contains its search engine Bing.
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This article by Derek Dickinson is brought to you in partnership with Brothersoft.