Perfect Match – Skype Acquires Qik

This seems like a perfect fit and a match made in heaven for Skype and Qik to unite as one and produce a great product. Skype finally released video chat through the iPhone a month ago and it seems their video chat hasn’t quite made traction. The addition of Qik to the team will only enhance the features of Skype and help them grow in this area of video chat for mobile device that hasn’t quite fulfilled expectations. Or they could just be buying out a market share straight up by taking on one of their competitors.

Qik has consistently seen a growth over the prior 12 months in traffic which means they must be catching on. Plus, it helps when Qik got featured in commercials being used on mobile devices like the Sprint HTC. But there are times where it’s a perfect time to sellout or partner up with another company to maintain longevity. I see this being that moment for them, a moment that Groupon had with Goolge a couple weeks that they passed on.

Official Skype Blog Post:

I’m happy to announce that we’ve entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Qik, a provider of mobile video software and services that let people capture, instantly share and preserve great moments on video from anywhere. Qik has 60 employees, and is headquartered in Redwood City, California and has an office in Moscow, Russia. We expect to close the transaction in January 2011.

Qik is available on over 200 mobile phones running Android, iOS, Symbian, BlackBerry OS and Windows Mobile, and comes preloaded on a wide variety of mobile handsets through partnerships with handset manufacturers and mobile networks.

Skype and Qik share a common purpose of enriching communications with video, and the acquisition of Qik will help to accelerate our leadership in video by adding recording, sharing and storing capabilities to our product portfolio.

Through this acquisition, we’ll also be able to take advantage of the engineering expertise that is behind Qik’s Smart Streaming technology, which optimizes video transmission over wireless networks.

Together, we’ll focus on providing great products that will allow people around the world to share experiences in real-time video across different platforms, as well as storing those moments so they can be viewed later.

It’s going to be exciting to see what comes from this relationship. Hopefully Skype just doesn’t dump them on the way side but let us stay tuned.