雅思阅读材料之Microsoft and Skype.pdf

智 课 网 雅 思 备 考 资 料 雅思阅读材料之Microsoft and Skype 下面是一篇关于Microsoft and Skype的雅思阅读材料，这篇雅思 阅读材料的主要内容是北京时间5月11日微软成功以85亿美元的价格收 购了免费在线视频和语音聊天服务提供商Skype，下面我们就一起来看 一下Economist关于这件大事的分析吧。 Why buy Skype? “IRREPRESSIBLE” is a word that is usually used to denote something that is hard to control or restrain. Steve Ballmer, the boss of Microsoft, is obviously very fond of it. At a press conference on May 10th to announce the company’s whopping $8.5 billion purchase of Skype, an online phone and video-calling service, he used the word several times to imply that Microsoft was still a dynamic company. But the firm’s shareholders may end up wishing that Mr Ballmer had shown considerably more restraint when negotiating the firm’s largest ever takeover. The way the deal came about shows how desperate the software giant was to get its hands on Skype. The target company was heading for a stockmarket flotation until Microsoft suddenly lobbed in an unsolicited offer for it. The amount Microsoft ultimately coughed up for Skype was generous enough to convince the firm’s investors, which include Silver Lake Partners, a private-equity fund, and Andreessen Horowitz, a venture-capital firm, to jettison the planned public offering in favour of Microsoft’s all-cash deal. Yet it is hard to see how the company can justify splashing out the equivalent of 400 times Skype’s operating income last year for its prey. Although Skype’s service has become so well-known that its name has become a verb, it has struggled to get users to pay for premium services such as calls to mobile phones. It had 663m registered users last December and made $860m in revenue in 2010, implying revenue per user of a mere $1.30. And it has singularly failed to develop a convincing advertising model. Announcing the deal, Mr Ballmer (pictured, left, with Skypes boss, Tony Bates) tried to spin these as opportunities. But people chatting away on video cal