Beyond what Reuters Told Us .. More details of Niklas’ interview with Helsingin Sanomat

During Canada’s Centennial Year (1967) I was host for a student exchange with Finnish students; we have kept up contact over the past 39 years. Last week I asked one of them if s/he could translate the actual Helsingin Sanomat article reporting on their interview with Niklas Zennström (registration required) or at least give me the gist of it. Below (with minimal editorial correction of spelling and grammar) is what my friend calls her/his “amateur translation”.

The interview certainly goes well beyond the content of the Reuters summary report. (On the other hand there is nothing there that is going to impact eBay’s stock price!) Note that, while my friend has been using English in both personal and business activities all these years, Skype Journal is not responsible for any mistranslation.

Of note in Niklas’ comments:

• Niklas sees the future for wireless as being in WiFi (and WiMax) networks once they become more ubiquitous and more easily accessible. (reinforcing Ted Wallingford’s recent comments on WiFi as the primary VoIP wireless medium)
• The issues with developing Skype for GSM or other wireless mobile phones relate to both processing power and memory issues (which translate into latency issues discussed in a post last weekend).
• He sees current rates for calls to wired lines as being the lowest we will see as someone has to pay for at least the connection.
• He only sees an explosion of mobile VoIP only once there are unlimited use fixed rate data plans available.
• The path to Skype as a ubiquitous mobile platform may be through “rebel” or “challenger” mobile operators who want to challenge the larger legacy service providers. But this is along the lines of what Andy was concluding in his recent “Being on the Inside” post.

A summary translation paragraph by paragraph goes as follows:

Title: Skype for Cell Phones Delayed

• 1st paragraph: Skype should have been available for mobile phones already last year, but the availability will take longer than anticipated.
• 2nd: Zennström says they are working hard, but he cannot give exact schedules
• 3rd: Zennström became a billionaire last year when eBay bought Skype. Skype has kept its name and identity but Zennström now is forced to follow the stock exchange rules. He cannot reveal things that could affect the rate [Ed: stock price].
• 4th: There is a Windows mobile application available for Skype, but its sales figures especially in Europe are very small.
• 5th: To the disappointment of many Skype has not published a Symbian version.
• 6th: Zennström says Skype is working hard for the Symbian application
• 7th: In an interview for Helsingin Sanomat in 2004 Zennström said the Symbian application would be available “sometime next year”. Now it seems the delay is minimum a year or even two, which in Internet world is a very long time.
• 8th: Skype now has 113 million users compared with 50 million a year ago.
• 9th: Zennström says they didn’t foresee all the problems involved when they started the development
• 10th: The difficulty is that the mobiles have less processing power and memory and that every manufacturer needs its own application. Whereas 95% of computers use Windows.
• 11th: Zennström adds that the timing is important, too. One gets most out of Skype if WLan [Ed: WiFi? and/or WiMax?] connections and possibility to use free Internet networks are available .
• 12th: In most areas this has not been possible until this year. It has not been rewarding to bring the system to the market before. (Zennström says)
• 13th: Skype and other companies offering Internet calls wait for the day when the operators sell to their clients unlimited data connections with fixed monthly rate. This opens the market for Skype.
• 14th: However, a call to the the wired network or to another mobile number may not become much cheaper as the operators still would charge the connection fee.
• 15th: Skype may take a big junk of the traditional operators’ income and that may be a reason why the launching of Skype has been so troublesome. The manufacturers are slow to develop properties that would make operators angry.
• 16th: Zennström didn’t say the above, maybe, because even Skype is forced to co-operate with operators.
• 17th: He says: A challenger operator may see the co-operation with Skype as a way to challenge those operators currently in dominant position.

That all. Hope my amateur translation helps you!