Skype Hits 521 Million Users And $185 Million In Quarterly Revenue

Even though it is embroiled in a nasty legal battle with its founders over its future, Skype continues to rack up impressive numbers. In today’s third quarter earnings from eBay (which still owns Skype, but is preparing to unload it), the company breaks out Skype’s performance (see slide above).

Skype’s registered users grew 41 percent to 521 million people. That’s a stunning 40 million new registered users in the past three months. Revenues grew 29 percent to $185 million. Free Skype-to-Skype minutes grew 74 percent to 27.7 billion minutes, whereas SkypeOut minutes (which is what members pay for) grew 44 percent to 3.1 billion minutes.

All of those SkypeOut calls translated to a healthy $185 million in revenues, up 29 percent from a year ago. If it keeps up at this pace, it should easily be able to exceed its $1 billion annual revenue goal by 2011.

Skype was one of the few bright spots in eBay’s earnings, along with Paypal, which brought in $688 million in revenues (up 15 percent). eBay’s bread-and-butter marketplaces business was down 1 percent to $1.365 billion.

eBay Q309EarningsSlides FINAL
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