Skype Does Some Research

I had a chance to talk to the new CMO @ Skype Saul Klein. He revealed some very interesting facts during our Skype call this morning:

Global IM survey

Conducted by:Lightspeed Research

Sample Size:4,704 from US, Brazil, China, Poland and UK

Collected from: Aug 26th to Sept 6th

>> Skype is used by 25% of users primarily for business, compared to 16% for MSN

>> Skype users are more international than others, 85% have contacts living abroad compared to 51% for AOL users

>> Skype is used once or several times a day by 76% of users, compared to 65% by Yahoo! and 63% by MSN users

>> The usage gap is even larger for making calls, with 35% of Skype users doing this once or several times a day, compared to 29% for Yahoo! and 24% for MSN

>> 72% of Skype users consider call quality to be good to excellent, compared to 68% with Yahoo! and AOL and 63% with MSN

>> Skype’s users are keen to adopt new features, with 73% interested or very interested in adopting call forwarding compared to 59% from Yahoo! and MSN and 49% from AOL

>> Skype’s users are keen to adopt new features, with 79% interested or very interested in receiving calls from landlines compared to 64% from Yahoo!, 65% from MSN and 51% from AOL

Each day Skype is behaving more and more like a consumer brand. Yesterday they began using a PR firm, SparkPR which has very good credentials and a track record of professionalism.

Klein too has an impressive background, and word is he was a Niklas hire, not brought in by Meg @ Ebay.