Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom on Tuesday defended the Internet phone provider he sold to eBay two years ago for over $4 billion, saying the company is on track to pull in "substantial income" in the future. 

Mr. Zennstrom, speaking at Red Herring's ETRE technology conference in Budapest, said the company had 220 million users worldwide and reached revenues of $90 million last quarter. 

"Skype is way ahead of the competition and has introduced new services in the e-commerce field that will in the future produce substantial income," said Mr. Zennstrom, who stepped down as chief executive of the company.

 His remarks came just a week after San Jose, California, online auctions giant eBay announced that it would take a $1.4 billion charge related to Skype. In making the announcement, eBay admitted it had overpaid for the Luxembourg-based provider of Internet telephone services. 

The 41-year-old entrepreneur said he was now focusing his efforts on Joost, a technology for distributing television and video content over the web.  The system is based on peer-to-peer technology developed by the startup.  Joost claims to have signed up one million beta testers and is hoping to launch initial service at the end of the year. 

In addition to Joost, Mr. Zennstrom said he was involved in venture investment through his own fund. 

 "We've invested in 20 startups in the past year with over half in Europe," he said. But he said that there was still a need for more venture investment in Europe, especially at the seed stage.