Skype et al set to take $US18 billion bite of telco revenues

By Stuart Corner
Sunday, 04 March 2007 11:42

Deals

Market research firm, Analysys, estimates that Skype and similar services could rob the traditional telephony market of 5.4 percent of the global fixed telephony revenues by 2011, some $US18.2 billion.
This forecast is contained in a new report from Analysys, "Opportunities for Non-traditional Players in Communications Markets". It claims that "New players, such as Skype and Google, are successfully fostering novel forms of communication among online communities, potentially posing a major threat to core communications revenues. The usage associated with these services, while predominantly incremental at present, will increasingly substitute for traditional communications services."

According to the reports' author, Stephen Sale, "Online communities and portals create a market for communications that occupy a middle ground between one-to-one and one-to-many interactions. The success of many of these services calls into question established ideas of user behaviour and suggests alternative means of addressing the communications market."

The report also predicts that the market for content aggregation of on-demand video by online retailers is likely to be worth around $US820 million in 2011; and that "Online players will fend off competition from direct-to-consumer portals and the mobile sector to take more than 60 percent of a digital music aggregation market worth $US4.3 billion by 2011."