With over one million calls being made in the first 24 hours of Google’s August 25-launched Gmail calling service, analysts and industry experts opine that the new VOIP service is a potential threat to Internet telephony bigwig Skype.

Quite like the Skype service making and receiving free or economical calls over IP, the new Google service allows the users of Gmail to make free calls to mobile and landline numbers in the US and Canada – the international calls via the service begin at 2 cents per minute - directly through their Gmail account.

The Gmail calling service can be enabled by downloading a voice and video chat plug-in. Once the installation of the plug-in is complete, a new “call phone” option appears for the Gmail users, who can then use this option via a drop down menu.

With opinions galore that the new Gmail calling service has become an immediate challenge of sorts for Skype, Siva Sanmuga – VP of retail services for Callture, and dealing with selling telecom services like VOIP to clients – said that both the Skype service and the Gmail calling feature “are going after the tech savvy clients, so it will definitely affect Skype.”

Further noting that with Gmail calling service offering ‘free’ calls to US mobile phones and landlines, Sanmuga further told eWEEK: “Most of Skype revenue comes from Skypeout and Google offering it for free will have an effect.”