Microsoft officially took over Skype China MSN China or shut down

Yesterday morning, the original Skype China operating partner Tom Net issued a notice, announced that Microsoft officially took over the operation of Skype China. Tom claimed that the introduction of Skype for nine years, Tom accumulated users have exceeded the 100 million mark.

More than 663 million registered users worldwide

Tom said in the announcement, now Tom in China's development has matured, it is time for Microsoft to take over, Microsoft will officially take over Skype China's business on November 24, 2013.

Founded in 2003, Skype is a free global voice communication software with more than 663 million registered users, with a maximum of 30 million online. 2010 Skype calls accounted for 25% of global international calls, according to TeleGeography research data.

Although Skype has not made any money since its inception, its business model has been sought after by industry giants. Ebay bought Skype in 2005 with 2.6 billion dollars. In 2007, Skype and Tom set up a joint venture in mainland China to develop and operate Chinese version Skype for the mainland market. With Tom's online operation, Skype has not actually made much of a breakthrough in China, and paid users have been slow to grow.

In May 2011, Microsoft announced it was spending 8.5 billion of billions of dollars on Skype to complete one of the largest acquisitions in Microsoft's history. In contrast, this September, Microsoft bought the handset industry hegemony Nokia's mobile phone business only spent 7.2 billion of dollars.

MSN China or shut down

Microsoft said the two products were integrated because Skype's users were larger and the functionality was also covered by MSN. This March, Microsoft formally announced the closure of MSN software, and the integration of more than 100 million MSN users to Skype's network. But because Skype is run by a joint venture in China, Microsoft did not integrate Chinese users, but let MSN continue to operate in China.

Insiders speculate that after Microsoft took over Tom users, it is likely to take the same global action, shut down MSN China, and let users migrate to Skype. Neither Microsoft China nor Skype said anything about it yesterday. Tomorrow, Skype will hold a media conference in Beijing, which is expected to make a statement on the future business model.

"Skype is committed to providing users with the best possible experience and confirming that the online collaboration with Tom is coming to an end," said Zhu De Hackenby, director of Skype Asia-Pacific. We are grateful for their cooperation and support over the years. ”

But he also said: "Tom Online incorrectly exaggerated our number of connected users in China." We have over 300 million connected users worldwide, but will not disclose the number of users in different countries. ”