Niklas Zennstrom Quotes

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Niklas Zennstrom

Profession : Scientist

Birth : February 16, 1966

The telephone is a 100-year-old technology. It's time for a change. Charging for phone calls is something you did last century.

Niklas Zennstrom

If you could utilize the resources of the end users' computers, you could do things much more efficiently.

Niklas Zennstrom

With our work at Kazaa, we began seeing growing broadband connections and more powerful computers and more streaming multimedia, and we saw that the traditional way of communicating by phone no longer made a lot of sense.

Niklas Zennstrom

Surround yourself with smart, dedicated people - to build something isn't a one-man show. It's more important to have smart people who really believe in what you're doing than really experienced people who may not share your dream.

Niklas Zennstrom

When radio stations started playing music the record companies started suing radio stations. They thought now that people could listen to music for free, who would want to buy a record in a record shop? But I think we all agree that radio stations are good stuff.

Niklas Zennstrom

What we are doing is taking advantage of the broadband Internet to provide basically unlimited free calls to anyone at a higher voice quality than they can with the phone lines.

Niklas Zennstrom

We have just started, and if you compare the number of people using Skype to the number using a telephone network around the world, we're still just starting.

Niklas Zennstrom

We have 2 million users in the U.S. and about 13 million worldwide in more than 200 countries.

Niklas Zennstrom

We also have a conference call feature where up to five people can talk on one Skype call.

Niklas Zennstrom

They also can combine voice with instant messaging and online file sharing.

Niklas Zennstrom

Then people started using it more and more and it became the most downloaded software on the internet.

Niklas Zennstrom

Skype is for any individual who has a broadband Internet connection.

Niklas Zennstrom

Skype is easy enough to use so that people don't need to be tech savvy - a lot of users just want to communicate with their friends and family, and they find this is the easiest, cheapest way.

Niklas Zennstrom

People need to access Skype wirelessly, no matter where they are, and what happens is that we'll be taking advantage of the rollout of Internet everywhere - WiFi and WiMax in particular.

Niklas Zennstrom

It is very similar to companies like Google and other internet companies. When you go and search on Google you don't pay for that. But sometimes you click on an advert and Google makes money on that.

Niklas Zennstrom

In fact, we just surpassed our first 1 million simultaneous users online.

Niklas Zennstrom

If you can use a Web browser, you can use Skype.

Niklas Zennstrom

Another differentiator is that Skype is free and simple to set up, and it costs us virtually nothing for a new user to join the Skype network, which is why we can offer the service for free.

Niklas Zennstrom

And the VCR did the same thing: the movie industry thought nobody would ever watch movies any more.

Niklas Zennstrom

It's extremely hard to build a company with a product that everyone loves, is free and has no business model, and then to innovate a business model. I did that with Kazaa, had half a billion downloads but that wasn't a sustainable business.

Niklas Zennstrom