Cisco May Buy Skype
The media is full or rumors that Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) could by Skype. Cisco has a history or M&A, and Skype would fit with its move into consumer voice and video communications. Cisco has diversified from selling enterprise routers to…
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Skype was spun out of Ebay (NASDAQ: EBAY) a year ago. Skype has been said to be planning its own IPO. TechCruch reports that the price for Skype would be $5 billion. Skype’s revenue this year is expected to be $800 million.
The move is dangerous. There are a number of providers of free voice service. Skype is the largest with 500 million subscribers but Googe (NASDAQ: GOOG) has just launched a free telephone voice service as part of its GMail service. MSN and AOL Mail are likely to follow suit to remain competitive.
Skype’s core business has become a commodity and a commodity that will be worth very little very soon.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
