Video calls have reached the mass market

Ian Vickerage looks at the mass uptake of Skype in light of the recent eruptions

Vickerage: Videoconferencing – and free videoconferencing especially – is on the up

As I wrote this article, things in the EU airspace were getting back to normal after the Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted in Iceland. Most people had been ferried home by the Royal Navy or caught a boat from northern France after marathon car, bus or train journeys all over Europe.

It will still take some weeks for every straggler – some stranded well beyond Europe, in the US and Asia – to make it home.

Understandably, the mass media concentrated on the stories of people who were caught out on holiday but there were just as many business travellers left in the lurch.

Imago is involved in videoconferencing, so I have been pleased to see that statistics produced during the flight ban period suggest that videoconferencing services doubled in popularity.

I am not sure that businesspeople need to be persuaded much more in any case. I have just been looking at some amazing statistics from Skype, which show that video is booming in popularity.

Skype saw 560 million users versus Facebook’s 400 million, and normal phone calls racked up 36.1 billion minutes in the last quarter of 2009 alone. This figure has tripled in two years, with Skype overtaking the likes of BT and Deutsche Telecom as the world’s largest carrier of international phone traffic.

Skype now has 12 per cent of the market, up from eight per cent in 2008.

The fact that Skype calls are almost free has influenced the high figures for consumer use, but it is interesting that 35 per cent of Skype use is for business purposes. Thirty-six per cent of Skype calls use video.

This means that Skype is by far the leader in the videoconferencing market, accounting for close to 80 per cent of all video calls in business.

I do not think that Skype videoconferencing is very good for business purposes. Standard-definition video is the only option, with narrow-angle viewing allowing just one participant at each end.

Plus, with the microphone mounted on the headset this is really a one-to-one technology. Most business applications would want two or more people participating at each end.

The good news, I hear, is that we will soon see high-definition webcams for Skype, offering wide-angle viewing and a built-in microphone suitable for small group calls.

This will be a boon for the smaller business, allowing easy and free videoconferencing for everyone. It won’t help the holidaymakers, but should make for fewer businesspeople stuck abroad when the next volcanic eruption comes along.

Ian Vickerage is managing director at Imago Group