Yahoo VoIP Could Go Mainstream

Safa rashtchy, an analyst working for Piper Jaffray, has maintained his “outperform” rating after Yahoo announced it’s recent VoIP service. Yahoo will be competing head on with Skype and Vonage in the rapidly growing VoIP marketplace.

Rashtchy said that although the Yahoo VoIP service is similar to Skype’s in many ways, it differs in one major way - “it is expected to be significantly cheaper.” The analyst believes that Yahoo will be able to push their VoIP service into the mainstream because of their strong brand awareness combined with cheaper prices than other competitors.

He also went on to state that Yahoo Instant Messenger’s 20 million existing users “will be the primary target for this service and most likely to adopt it”, helping Yahoo to gain traction quickly. Although the VoIP service will not generate a significant revenue stream in the near term, Rashtchy expects that the new VoIP service has the potential to generate in the region of $10 - 30 million for Yahoo.