Big breaking news coming in. Microsoft has finalized the deal to buy Skype for a whopping 8.5 billion dollars in an all cash deal, confirmed by WSJ.
This comes as a surprising move since we have seen a significant amount of rumors suggesting that Facebook was trying hard to buy Skype and integrate it with it's services. But now, here we have Microsoft ( an investor in Facebook ) who ended up buying Skype. Overall, it's a win win situation for Facebook. Microsoft being an investor, will open up Skype services to Facebook and integration in the near future is a big possibility.
Skype deal is benefiting Microsoft from both the enterprise and consumer segment. They now have a significant power to compete against Google and Cisco in the enterprise collaboration market. Not only that, most importantly with Windows Phone 7 - I can sense Skype integration coming very very soon in the near future. So now Microsoft offers you Facebook, XBL, Office, Twitter, Skype native integration on a WP7 device - I think it's a killer combination - undeniably something which companies like Google and Apple should be scared of.
Google has Google voice / Gtalk ( with video chat ), iOS has Facetime but what about Windows Phone 7 ? We still don't have the rumored WLM client which we have all been waiting for. Skype clearly gives WP7 the edge over other platforms when native integration comes in, clearly Skype users are in the majority ( in terms of number of users ) and cross platform nature of Skype gives it an even bigger advantage over FaceTime. Clearly, Microsoft is playing this game to win it. Another advantage is that in 2012, a secondary camera might just become a ' must have ' feature for WP7 devices or Microsoft might just end up forcing OEM to stick a front facing camera to get the best of both worlds.
What happens to Lync ? Well, we'll have to wait and find out. Until then, keep drooling! Hope we get to know more about this soon. Tell us what you think.
This comes as a surprising move since we have seen a significant amount of rumors suggesting that Facebook was trying hard to buy Skype and integrate it with it's services. But now, here we have Microsoft ( an investor in Facebook ) who ended up buying Skype. Overall, it's a win win situation for Facebook. Microsoft being an investor, will open up Skype services to Facebook and integration in the near future is a big possibility.
Skype deal is benefiting Microsoft from both the enterprise and consumer segment. They now have a significant power to compete against Google and Cisco in the enterprise collaboration market. Not only that, most importantly with Windows Phone 7 - I can sense Skype integration coming very very soon in the near future. So now Microsoft offers you Facebook, XBL, Office, Twitter, Skype native integration on a WP7 device - I think it's a killer combination - undeniably something which companies like Google and Apple should be scared of.
Google has Google voice / Gtalk ( with video chat ), iOS has Facetime but what about Windows Phone 7 ? We still don't have the rumored WLM client which we have all been waiting for. Skype clearly gives WP7 the edge over other platforms when native integration comes in, clearly Skype users are in the majority ( in terms of number of users ) and cross platform nature of Skype gives it an even bigger advantage over FaceTime. Clearly, Microsoft is playing this game to win it. Another advantage is that in 2012, a secondary camera might just become a ' must have ' feature for WP7 devices or Microsoft might just end up forcing OEM to stick a front facing camera to get the best of both worlds.
What happens to Lync ? Well, we'll have to wait and find out. Until then, keep drooling! Hope we get to know more about this soon. Tell us what you think.
