Business

Yeah, It's Popular: Five Million Skype 3G iPhone App Downloads In Four Days

Skype says that nearly five million people downloaded version 2.0 of its iPhone app, which allows calls over 3G, in the first four days it has been available. That’s a big number, especially considering that the app was released on a Saturday night with as little fanfare as would seem possible. Reuters first reported the Skype […]

Skype says that nearly five million people downloaded version 2.0 of its iPhone app, which allows calls over 3G, in the first four days it has been available. That's a big number, especially considering that the app was released on a Saturday night with as little fanfare as would seem possible.

Reuters first reported the Skype stat, current through "Wednesday morning." We contacted the company to double check (no offense, Reuters, but that is a huge number). Skype confirmed the five million downloads figure and said it likely includes upgrades, explaining why its app didn't shoot to the top of the U.S. iTunes store "free app" list, and the "five million" number, of course, includes all global downloads.

This massive response to Skype's long-awaited foray into 3G calls on the iPhone OS -- this works on the iPad as well -- clearly demonstrates an enormously pent-up desire to use the more ubiquitous 3G connection to make Skype calls rather than the phones' native voice calling feature. And it must be very heartening for the business suits at Skype, who intend to start charging what they call a small monthly fee starting next year for 3G service, above and beyond whatever your carrier charges for their data plans.

AT&T also plays an interesting role in this equation. We're interested to see the extent to which VoIP -- invented essentially to exploit Wi-Fi connections and provide an alternative to traditional phone service -- accelerates 3G data usage, giving telcos a new revenue stream as the sale of traditional voice minutes becomes commoditized. Call me crazy, but it can't be coincidence that AT&T announced the end of unlimited data plans just as Skype was announcing it could use AT&T's 3G network.

Let's just say it already has five million reasons to allow this -- to say nothing of the prospect of other data-heavy applications including cloud-based music services.

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