Pacific Epoch carried a report earlier this month on the number of Skype users in China. Pacific Epoch reported on an announcement by Skype's China partner, TOM online in which TOM claimed that Skype now has 51 million users in China. (Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Pacific Epoch "passed on to readers" the announcement, since there was no really analysis.)


Fifty-One million users would make China Skype's biggest market. Do you believe that?

Many in the Blogosphere are skeptical. Take Jean Mercier, for example. He points out that while Skype could conceivably have 51 million user names registered in China, there are lots of reasons for many of those user names to be inactive: people forget their passwords and have to create a second account as a result, they try out Skype and then move on to some other tool, or they create more than one account for various reasons. Jean has a hard time believing that one in four Chinese Internet users are also actually using Skype.

Jan shares Jean's skepticism...

One reason that bloggers look askance at the numbers is that Skype has been the target of internet censorship in China in the past few months. Take this report, for example, from Kristen Nicole:

Skype access has reportedly been limited in China, and Bill Xia, President of Dynamic Internet Technology, Inc. (DIT), is saying that Skype is keeping Chinese users from accessing Skype in cooperation with China. The Skype website is now being redirected to Skype.tom.com for Chinese users, which is a modified site created in cooperation with China's Tom.com. This implies that Skype is not being blocked by the Chinese government, but instead is purposely redirecting access to Skype as a result of pressure from the Chinese government.

She's not alone in reporting problems with Skype in China. Phil Wolff published a post just this month with an account of 19 access tests he ran on Skype between February and October. Sixteen of those tests were blocked.

The Skype situation shows the double edged sword of Internet technology investment in China. Consumers in China are hungry for it, political considerations make it difficult to predict the investment potential...