This morning's presentation by Niklas Zennstrom of Skype was well received by the capacity crowd at the Los Angeles Millennium Biltmore Hotel.

Zennstrom addressed the audience via videoconferencing technology that was provided by Polycom. Among the highlights of the presentation:

Skype is planning to expand its service by introducing Skype IN, a service that will allow users to have their own phone number and accept inbound calls from the PSTN. The company also plans to release an API that will enable third-party developers to build innovative application add-ins to the Skype service.

Also Zennstrom reiterated the company's intention to partner with Siemens on a Skype-ready handset.

As far as users, Skype has over 28 million downloads, which resulted in over 889,000 concurrent users during a snapshot of the service last night, according to Zennstrom. He also added that in the 2 months since Skype launched their SkypeOut service, they have signed over 200,000 customers.

Zennstrom also went on to discuss several plans to enable businesses with Skype services. Based on feedback from business users, Skype means to offer the following:
* Grouping mulitple Skype accounts on one single bill.
* A Web GUI for call accounting
* The advent of call hunt groups
* A variety of Call forwarding and Call control options, and more.

Zennstrom pointed out that Skype was not targeting enteprises per se, but rather work groups within those businesses.

It was a very exciting and compelling beginning to what prmises to be another successful day here at Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO.