If you played chess you should probably know a good chess player think a few moves ahead. I think Microsoft is an advanced player and planning a few next moves ahead.
Buying a Skype for $8.5B from eBay does not make much sense at this point considering that eBay bought Skype in 2005 for just $2.6B and could not make this company profitable. In 2010 Skype lost $7M.
What makes this purchase so attractive for Microsoft?
It seems that Microsoft might be going after a new mobile phone concept, Skype running on the Windows Phone 7 platform and the only peace missing in that puzzle is a mobile carrier. That’s not a brainer, Microsoft probably is already negotiating with Spring or T-Mobile.
Cool! I would like to see a phone that does not require a voice plan, just a flat rate data plan so you can use Skype for voice calls. We shall see the next Microsoft move pretty soon.