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Voice - Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Intel Wants Jajah To Be Its Skype. Invests $20M

In between 101 and 280, there is the conventional wisdom that eBay's Skype is dominant and mature. However, the game is far from over.

Intel today made a meaningful $20M investment into free mobile call startup Jajah. Language in the announcement was unusual in Intel Capital investments. Jajah will gain access to Intel's to community of product dealers, OEM customers and developers. Plus Jajah will have be part of Intel Capital’s IP Access Program, which will give JAJAH access to Intel’s extensive VoIP patent portfolio.

One possibility with Intel and Skype is to embed Jajah's voice calling features into PCs, so that users can make calls even when their computers are off or asleep.

Jajah says it currently has about 2.5M customers. It intends to use the funding and Intel connections to go after the small business market, which will include an advertising campaign to launch later in 2007.

Putting a cherry on tap, Jajah announced a new CFO who has public company experience at Verisign. Jajah was previously funded by Sequoia Capital.

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Read - Move Over, Skype: Intel's Backing Jajah (BusinessWeek)