It’s funny when you see the modern technological wars being fought over mergers, acquisitions and takeover bids. It appears nobody wants to be left behind and in what could be considered a race for the tech-giant position, Microsoft does not want to leave anything behind. To some, Microsoft, Google and Apple would look like a one big family whose members are at way with each other to get the biggest Santa gift this Christmas.
If you have been following Microsoft lately, it does appear that the company is pretty aggressively pitching itself in the global technology market to establish itself in a position that will help redeem the lost turf from Google. It’s recent acquisitions of Yahoo search engine (not so new acquisition, but a strategic acquisition worthy of a mention in this post), and an alliance with Nokia can be seen in this direction and its latest acquisition of Skype for $ 8.5 b is another step towards adding a competing product against Google’s G-talk.
So, with its latest round of acquisitions, Microsoft aspires to unsettle a few competitors. For one, it hopes to challenge search engine supremacy of Google with the availability and consolidation of Yahoo and Bing under one company. However, September’s analysis of web traffic suggests that both Bing and Yahoo account for less than half of the organic search traffic when you compare it against Google.
Its second major alliance happened with Nokia, and the intent was clearly to present a challenge to the Android and iPhone platforms. I would consider this a delayed reaction to the success of Android, that has displaced Apple as the largest selling smartphone platform in the world.
Finally, we now have Skype being bought over. With the European Commission authorizing the acquisition, it is clear that Microsoft will be looking forward to Skype as a means to counter G-talk. In this race, Microsoft would seem well on the right path because Skype is definitely a preferred business communication medium across the world. It had 663 million subscribers in March 2011, and it had 8.8 million regular paying consumers. I bet that these numbers would appear comfortably ahead of the total number of Google gtalk subscribers.
The challenge will lie in the next few months when we hope to see a flawless integration between Microsoft and Skype. Until now, Skype has consistently achieved double-digit growth and aside from the branding exercise, we need to see what value can Microsoft bring to the table in a bid to boost the overall revenue from Skype. We have seen the Yahoo acquisition and its subsequent sacrificial role in the search market in favour of establishing Bing as the main competitor to Google. For that matter, we feel that the alliance with Nokia gave Microsoft a face-saver in the Android Vs IPhone and Android vs Blackberry war.
Considering these facts, Skype is a one-proven winner that has everything going right as of now. It has the largest presence in the world, and it has a healthy revenue mark to claim commercial success. It is evolving quickly to adopt the changing scenarios being afforded in the mobile commerce market and its decision making is crisp and fast to make an impact in the global communications market.
However, it remains to be seen, if Microsoft can accept Skype in its dominant role and form or whether Skype will eventually end up being a sacrificial brand under the bigger ambit of Microsoft. I hope I am proved wrong, but time will tell.
This guest post is written by Andy May, an avid SEO writer and a strong proponent of fuel cards and the European fuel cards.
This is a unique article published on SEO Desk with exclusivity.
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