August 29 marks the first anniversary of Skype software. Today people are Skyping to and from every country in the world, enhancing free borderless knowledge exchange as people maintain contact with others as if they were around the corner, even when they are around the world.
Thank you to the journalists and bloggers who recognized and wrote about Skype in our first year. Thank you to everyone who has used Skype and recommended it your friends and contacts. We owe our success to all of you, and we are grateful for your support.
In creating Skype, Janus Friis and I believed that history had proven that the most seamless and affordable technology for promoting two- (or more) way communication always wins. We envisioned Skype, and the application of peer-to-peer technology to voice and other communications, as an opportunity to leapfrog the 100-year-old telephone network and expand relatedness.
Over the past year we have maintained our single focus, delighting consumers with a simple-to-use and high quality product. Expanded directory options, conference calling, presence settings, My Picture image features, SkypeOut and a plethora of other enhancements stem from suggestions and comments we received from Skype enthusiasts. We will continue to listen.
Over our first year in operation, the number of broadband users globally has passed the 100 million mark and continues to grow rapidly. Skype has approximately 9.5 million users, consistently more than 500,000 people connected via Skype at a given moment and more than 1.5 million users per day. Skype customers have already spent more than 1.2 billion minutes engaged in free Skype-to-Skype calls. More than 2 million SkypeOut calls have been initiated.
Skype has been honoured to work with world class companies including Siemens, Plantronics, PChome Online and carriers Level3, COLT, iBasis and Teleglobe and others. We thank them for their early leadership and contributions to our development, and we look forward to continued, and mutual, success. We will expand our alliances with forward-focused companies and institutions.
The company mantra is enhancing experience quality as we help move the Internet further toward the center of communications. Our exceptional development team will continue the innovations, fortifying the free base Skype offering for Windows PCs, Linux machines and Pocket PC-enabled PDAs and expanding to new platforms. Skype will develop new premium services, emphasize user driven innovations and help establish quality standards as the Global Internet Telephony Company.
Thank you for your involvement with Skype. We hope to continue delighting.
Sincerely,
**Niklas Zennström**
Skype CEO and co-founder
