Daiwa EuroTelcoblog No. 83: Monday, 25th October, 2004 - Moshi-moshi Japan, Skype calling

Skype was obviously holding back some bullets until after the VON event last week. Yesterday, we had the TOM.com announcement in China, and now today, Skype has just announced a partnership with Livedoor (TSE 4753) to deliver a co-branded Skype to the Japanese market. As we pointed out earlier this morning, Japan appears underpenetrated in terms of Skype users versus some other markets. If this partnership delivers similar results to the Taiwan partnership, Skype user numbers should accelerate significantly. Of particular interest tomorrow will be what sort of share price reaction Livedoor sees to the news. The stock has underperformed TOPIX by 22% year-to-date, so the "Skype magic," if any, should be evident on the public markets for the first time. Press release is here: (http://www.skype.com/company/news/2004/livedoorlaunch.html).