Posts tagged ebay
Official eBay App Arrives for Android
Feb 18th
The official eBay app for Android is now available in the Android Market. Created for Android 1.6 and above, it lets users do all the typical eBay stuff – search auctions, buy fun things, pay for purchases, check the items you’re selling, leave feedback, and set alerts. As of right now, the application is only available for the US market, but plans are in place to expand that shortly.
Here’s a lesser known fact – eBay is one of the founding 34 members of the Open Handset Alliance. Listed as a “software company”, I can’t figure out what it is they bring to the table. My only guess is that it has something to do with Skype somehow.
Look for the official eBay application in the Android Market today!
Might We Suggest…
SOLD: Skype Now Worth $2.75 Billion
Nov 20th
Last week, after months of bickering and lawsuits, the Skype saga finally ended. eBay, which bought Skype for $2.6 billion in 2005, settled outstanding litigation with Skype’s founders. The result: Skype now owns all of its technology, the founders received 14% of Skype and two seats on the Board of Directors, eBay keeps 30% of Skype, and the rest is owned by outside investors.
That was last week. Today, Skype CEO Josh Silverman announced that the Skype deal has closed. Here are the finalized details of the deal:
1. Nothing has changed with ownership: eBay now owns 30% of Skype, outside investors (including Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board) own 70%.
2. Of that, 14% or so is owned by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the founders of Skype.
3. The Skype deal values the company at $2.75 billion, which is a little higher than the price eBay paid for Skype in 2005.
4. Joltid Limited is an investor in Skype. Joltid is owned by the Skype founders and was a major part of the legal dispute between eBay and the founders. The company held a key P2P technology that Skype now owns as part of this deal.
Now it’s time to move on and see what this reinvented Skype can do.
Reviews: Skype
Andreessen On Skype: “This Is One Of The Most Important Companies On the Internet.”
Nov 6th
Earlier this morning, Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis settled their lawsuits with eBay and a syndicate of investors in return for a 14 percent stake in the company they founded. The lawsuits were complicating the spin-off of Skype from eBay because the Skype founders still controlled the service’s underlying peer-to-peer technology.
In an interview with me this morning, Marc Andreessen, one of the investors through his new fund Andreessen Horowitz, told me, “The deal was never held up. The money was in escrow and was going to close” even if the lawsuits weren’t settled. The transaction is on track to close later this quarter. The other investors are Silver Lake Partners and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. Index Ventures and Mike Volpi are out of the deal. Josh Silverman will continue to be CEO. Read the rest of this entry »
Shoppers To Spend $400 Million On eBay This Year … Using Its iPhone App
Oct 26th
Holy m-commerce, Batman!
According to eBay CEO John Donahoe, shoppers have already spent about $400 million on the popular commerce site using the company’s free iPhone application. Ok, the shopping part of eBay’s business brought in $1.4 billion in revenue just last quarter, but who would have predicted around half a billion dollar in sales a year would be recorded through the eBay iPhone app when it debuted on the App Store?
The number pales in comparison with eBay’s total sales ($59.7 billion last year), but it’s fairly significant considering the fact that the iPhone has a relatively small market share – about 15% of the smartphone segment – and mobile payment transactions are still new to many.
According to this report by the Financial Times, some wealthy people have used the mobile app to buy a Lamborghini, a Bentley and a $150,000 boat. And if Mobile Marketer heard Donahoe right when he talked numbers at a summit in Las Vegas, the Lamborghini went for $350,000. Talk about being at ease with making purchases from mobile devices. Read the rest of this entry »
PayPal Continues To Be eBay’s Crown Jewel. Will It Be Spun Off Next?
Oct 22nd
Yesterday, eBay’s third-quarter results were bitter sweet, with profits declining 29 percent from the same quarter last year. But year-over-year revenue increased for the first time in the past year, thanks in part of strong results posted by PayPal (and Skype). The payments processor saw its revenue rise to $668.1 million, up 15 percent compared to last year, and the number of active registered accounts grew by nearly 20 percent in the quarter to 78 million.
What is notable is that the number of online merchants using PayPal separately from eBay continues to rise, with the external use now at 56% of total volume, up from 51% last year. And the company has stated that 44 of the top 100 U.S. retailers offer PayPal as a payment option.
Added to the mix of PayPal’s steady success is the company’s strategy of opening up its platform to developers to fuel even more viral growth outside of eBay’s own platform. PayPal recently announced its Adaptive Payments API, which gives developers full and open access to PayPal’s payment processing features, allowing them a lot more freedom in building applications which incorporate PayPal, which includes the ability to accept and distribute payments. Read the rest of this entry »
