July 13, 2006
Time-Limited Skype Freebies for Canadians + Americans
Skype just announced that US and Canadian Skypers can make free international "SkypeOut" calls for three weekends starting July 15th. Call destinations include the U.K., Mexico, and Japan, and the duration is 48 hours on each weekend.
I'm wondering if they're starting to feel the effects from competitors such as Jajah, Sightspeed, Babble, and Gizmo Project, not to mention VoIP-enhanced IM clients such as MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and Google Talk.
The press release did say that 70% of their users, of those surveyed, use Skype to keep in touch with friends and family overseas. In fact, 25% of users use Skype for 100% of their international calls.
So why those countries? Did they do some research and find that there are more, say, Japanese Canadians than, say, Jamaican Canadians? Not exactly, but they say that according to the 2000 US census, the total count of people in the US from those countries exceeds 10 million (less than 4%). In Canada, the count is 650,000 (2%).
Given that these percentages are pretty small, can North Americans with roots in other countries expect similar upcoming promos? The release didn't say, but I wouldn't be surprised, given that Skype is currently available in 27 languages.
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