Skype has been closed after kickstarting the market for making phone calls 23 years ago. Microsoft, which acquired the messaging and calling app 14 years ago, said it would be retiring from active duty on May 5th to double its team. Skype users will take 10 weeks to decide what they want to do with their account.
It is not clear how many people are affected. The latest figure shared by Microsoft was in 2023, but said it had over 36 million users. This is a long way from the peak of Skype's 300 million users.
“We know this is a big deal for Skype users. We are extremely grateful for Skype and for supporting us with all the learning that we've factored into our team over the past seven years.” “At this point, putting all the focus behind our teams will provide a simpler message and drive faster innovation.”
Between now and May 5th, users have the option to migrate all their contacts and chat data to Microsoft's Teams platform. Alternatively, users can download Skype data using the app's built-in export tool.
Business Case
This news is hardly a surprise to those who have been following Skype in recent years. And in many ways, writing has been on the wall since 2016 when Microsoft debuted the team.
Microsoft launched a specific Skype for business products in 2015, but the arrival of the team points to a new direction for Microsoft in the Cloud Communications space. Although we compared many teams to slack clones, our bigger ambition was to build a platform that provided space for collaboration and communication across a wide range of Microsoft and other apps.
Microsoft then revealed its plan to phase out Skype in 2017, and concluded these initiatives in 2021, four years later. That same year, Microsoft chose the team as its integrated communications app of choice in Windows 11, leaving Skype to the bystanders.
Fast forward to December 2024, TechCrunch reported that Microsoft has stopped Skype users from allowing them to add credits to their accounts or purchase Skype phone numbers, and pushing users to their monthly subscriptions and Skype-to-Phone plans.
And this brings us to the news of today and marks the end of the brand and company, one of the first big tech startups to launch from Europe during the Dial-Up day.
Skype's Death Knell is two years after Microsoft began deploying its fully rebuilt Reacetected Teams desktops and web apps. Over these two years, Teper says that consumers' calling times on teams have quadrupleded, but refused to say how many consumers make up their 320 million user base.
“It's a good scale to have great feelings about the app [Teams] For personal use,” Tepper said. “We feel there is mileage related to adoption by consumers. [who are] Use teams in personal life. We thought [shutting down Skype] For a while, however, we really felt that consumers had to show the adoption of end users that they say it is ready. ”
And Microsoft believes that consumers are ready.
User Number
Skype has entered a new era of internet-based communication that begins with voice before expanding to video and file sharing, but the arrival of smartphones and the range of new messaging apps has been sacrificed over the years to Skype's user count. For context, WhatsApp sailed 2 billion users in 2020.
When Skype filed for an IPO in 2010, it was revealed that 560 million registered users and 124 million monthly active users. However, rather than making it public after a spinoff from eBay (which it acquired in 2005), Microsoft offered Skype's $8.5 billion bid in 2011, expanding its platform to a peak of 300 million users in 2013.
Microsoft had no habit of splitting Skype users in the next few years, but it teased the occasional data points. At the start of the pandemic in March 2020, the company revealed that Skype has grown from 70% per month to 40 million users a day, as Skype is looking for a way to stay in touch with their loved ones during lockdown.
The latest update provided by Microsoft came through a blog post that announced Skype and Bing Search Engine integration in early 2023, revealing that “over 36 million people use Skype to connect via phone and chat every day.”
But what's long and lacking in this is that team growth and Skype's flatline is one of the reasons Microsoft thinks it's a good time to get all in with teams now.
“Skype has gained bumps just like teams during the pandemic, and Skype has been pretty stable for the most part over the last few years,” Teper said. “And we felt the time and feedback.
Telephone house
Microsoft encourages users to move teams for free. This will provide some additional features that are not available in Skype, such as calendar integration, but the team lacks other important features that are characteristic of Skype. In particular, there is a phone call feature that allows users to call mobile numbers and landline numbers and receive calls with Skype phone numbers.
Microsoft began depreciating these services in December, preventing users from adding more credits to their accounts, and was unable to stop purchasing Skype numbers. Users were able to call their phone numbers using a valid monthly subscription or remaining credit, but subscription renewals end on April 3rd.
For legacy users who still have credits in their account, Microsoft will make Skype Dialpad available indefinitely on both the Skype web portal and the team.
“I'll support you [this] As long as users have credits and use this feature,” Microsoft VP of Amit Fulay told TechCrunch.
Despite the incarnation of the team providing the ability to make calls, Fulay has confirmed that it does not support PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) services, primarily due to shifts in consumer trends.
“We've been looking at using telephony for a while on Skype, but the patterns have changed and the usage has changed, and this is a step towards that,” he said. “People have mobile data plans [telephony] Functionality came out years ago, but it wasn't. ”
System migration
During the migration period, Skype users can use their Skype credentials to download team apps and logins, and all chats and contacts will be migrated automatically. The Skype app itself will continue to work in tandem until May 5, 2025.
Skype to Teams MigrationImageCredit: Microsoft
Alternatively, users can export their data, but in reality, they may not be able to use it in terms of importing elsewhere.
“We wanted to make sure people were not losing contact, their memories during this transition,” Fleh said. “We want to make sure we store everything people share, and if they choose to come to the team, we will restore all their contacts and data.”
It says that if a user does not take action by May 5th, Skype will retain user data until the end of the year and will be deleted after that.
blurred lines
One big takeaway from all of this is how the boundaries between the business and consumer spheres are blurred, partly due to some of the social norms about trends such as technology and remote work.
Skype began as a consumer product that extends into the business sector, but the team began as a business product separated by consumers. But today's team still feels like a business product, especially because of its name. Do family and friends really see themselves as part of one big “team”?
Teper doesn't consider this to be a problem on his part, given that many of his existing products already exceed the boundaries of use cases.
“I think a lot of people will transition [from Skype to Teams]He said. “Word, Excel, PowerPoint, they are brands that help people with business and personal use. We have a good precedent for the use of our tools in our personal and professional lives, as our kids and parents do their homework in words.”