Ebay will use Skype’s Voice over IP capabilities to expand its e-commerce activities into new markets and new geographic reasons, in addition to milking its standalone service revenues and creating new businesses as well, eBay President and CEO Meg Whitman said Monday morning.

The $2.6 billion acquisition, half in cash and half in stock, will launch eBay into the voice communications business, but initially the company seems more intent on the synergies among its eBay e-commerce site, PayPal electronic payment system and Skype VoIP service.

That means an eBay-Skype hookup is likely more threatening in the near-term to other Internet players such as Google, with its Google Talk, Yahoo! and Microsoft with its recent VoIP acquisition. Longer term, however, the melding of VoIP and e-commerce could create ripples of change that affect the broader communications community.

By adding Skype’s voice communications capabilities to eBay, the company expects to “penetrate new categories of trade that didn’t fit eBay’s current transaction based selling model – new cars, travel, personal and business services and all forms of real estate – that is a market that is $3.5 billion that is accessible through an alternative lead-generation based model,” Whitman said. In addition, eBay will ride Skype’s strength into markets such as the Nordic countries and Japan, where it has not penetrated to date, as well as into developing economies such as Russia and Latin America, where voice communications can aid sales by increasing trust and allowing more traditional forms of haggling, she said.

“Imagine being able to click on a Skype link and be immediately able to talk to a seller,” she said. “Most sellers are going to be willing to talk to serious buyers.”

Specifics of how eBay, PayPal and Skype will be integrated are still to come, Whitman said.

“We haven’t announced specific plans for introducing Skype to the marketplace, so stay tuned,” she commented in a Webcast to analysts. While some skeptics have questioned the price tag associated with a service whose revenues are projected to hit only $60 million this year, Whitman and eBay CFO Rajiv Dutta said the growth curve for the combined businesses more than justifies the price. EBay expects to lose a penny on a pro forma basis for the fourth quarter of 2005 and a penny a quarter in 2006 before hitting break-even. Based on GAP accounting, the dilution is about 12 cents for 2006, when Skype revenues for its paid services are expected to hit $200 million, Dutta said.

“For 2006, we expect total revenue to exceed $200 million,” he said. “And that’s only in the second year of paid services. Remember, eBay had second year revenues of $5.7 million. We believe that this business will have long-term operating margins of 20% to 25%.”

Whitman did say that eBay will promote Skype’s VoIP service as a voice replacement option for the roughly 700 merchants who make a living off eBay’s site. But it was clear that synergies are the primary driver.

“Skype can benefit from eBay’s huge user base – we give people reasons to talk,” she said. “And we want to bring Skype users to eBay and teach them about profiting from e-commerce. What if every PayPal user had a Skype account and vice versa?”

The net result is to expand eBay’s share of the growing e-commerce market and that is the company’s ultimate goal, Dutta said.