Warsaw (Puls Biznesu) – Gadu-Gadu is still the most popular internet communicator. The company earns most on commercials.
Gadu-Gadu, the producer of Poland’s most popular internet communicator had PLN 8m (EUR 2m) of sales last year, or 51 percent more than a year earlier. The company earns PLN 4 in each PLN 10 of sales. The net income grew last year by over 60 percent to over PLN 3m. Four fifths of the sales are generated by the ad market although Gadu-Gadu has offered since 18 months the VoIP services. The communicator had problems with the VoIP platform it was using and built its own one. It has 50,000 users today.
“We want the ad and telecommunication market to generate similar sales in the future. We believe in the ads but we hope to develop fast our telecommunication services”, Krzysztof Szalwa, Gadu-Gadu head said.
The company offers calls via a PC with internet access but in the future a fixed line telephone will be enough.
“The platform is ready”, assures Krzysztof Salwa.
Gadu-Gadu gets the majority of the ad budgets spent in communicators. Rival Skype does not sell ads but only telecommunication services. This may change soon, however, and then the fight will get tougher.
“Skype has 6m registered users, the highest level in Europe. A one-digit percentage of the clients use internet offers which must be paid for. Skype is no exception although the percentage is growing every month. More and more people are interested in calling to fixed line telephones, especially since we implemented the possibility to pay via Onet.pl. We will soon enable the users to pay in shops, which should further increase the popularity of the service”, Michal Kostrzewa, Skype manager for Poland said.
(PLN 1 = EUR 0.251)