China is now Skype's biggest market

Taipei: Skype, the internet telephony service owned by web auction eBay Inc, said yesterday that China recently passed the United States to become its biggest market by subscribers, as Asia takes on growing importance to its business.

"China has increasingly become very important for our business and we see it as a main driver for us," Scott Bagby, new market development director said at a company event in Taipei.

Numbers

Asia now accounts for 30 per cent of Skype's 171 million global subscribers, a sharp increase from 20 per cent last year, largely due to the growth in China, said Kelly Poon, the company's market development manager for Greater China.

The internet telephone company operates in China under a partnership with state-owned Tom Online Inc, which recently announced that it would be privatised, amid an increasingly difficult market in China for its core mobile services.