UK Based IT support company Nexus has completed a piece of research on Skype. Skype is one of the most popular services of its kind yet has been around for just 13 years. In that time, it has also gone through a number of significant changes. The statistics researched by Nexus demonstrate the important role Skype has come to play in today’s society.
Skype is one of the world’s biggest and most popular digital companies. They were launched just 13 years ago, in 2003, and have since grown from strength to strength. In 2011, it was purchased by Microsoft. This prompted UK based IT support company Nexus to research just what Skype has come to mean to society as a whole.
Interestingly, Skype has been able to fight off some pretty impressive competition ever since it was launched. This includes Snapchat, Facetime, and Google Hangouts. All of these are popular, but none as popular as Skype.
The statistics Nexus was able to uncover paint a clearer picture of Skype and what it is and does. The research showed that:
- Skype was launched in 2003.
- Microsoft purchased the company in 2011 for $8.5 billion.
- In September 2015, there were some 300 million Skype users worldwide.
- The Skype mobile app was downloaded 750 million times by January 2016. 500 million of these were installs from Google Play.
- In December, Skype statistics showed that every day, some 3 billion minutes are spent on Skype.
- To date, 2 trillion minutes have been used on Skype video calls.
- 25% of millennials around the globe, excluding China, currently use Skype.
- In 2014, 4.9 million people actively used Skype each day.
- In the United Kingdom, 32% of all 11 to 16 year olds use Skype weekly.
- Skype translator is now able to translate calls into seven different languages.
- 50% of Irish social messaging users currently use Skype.
- 17% of adults around the globe current use Skype every month.
- A one minute Skype video call from one mobile device to another uses 30Mb of data.
- Compared to the entire telecom market, Skype to Skype traffic owned 40% of the market in 2013.
- 214 billion minutes were used in Skype to Skype calls in 2013.
- 100 million people in China are registered Skype users.
- There have been 100 million Skype for Android installations.
- There are 2 million Skype WiFi hotspots around the globe.
- Skype costs mobile operators around $100 (USD) million per day.
- Skype continues to increase its customer database by around 8% each month.
Nexus spent three years researching the social messaging app and they have seen significant growth in its usability and how widespread it is. While their initial focus was going to be solely on the UK market, they decided to include Ireland and some percentages from China into their equations as well. The Chinese statistics are particularly interesting.
China has what is known as the ‘Great Firewall of China’, and the government highly restricts internet access and particularly social media in that country. Yet, some 100 million people do use Skype within China.
“There is just nothing quite like Skype,” says a representative from Nexus. “Google and Facebook are trying their best to create something similar and, to a degree, they have managed to do that. However, Skype seems to be the accepted source of messaging and video calls. Skype to Skype is free, and most people never use any of Skype’s paid for services. The company is also one of the only ones that has been able to break into the Chinese market, which is really unusual. We believe Skype will continue to go from strength to strength.”
