After the market launch to make calls online 23 years ago, Skype closes. Microsoft, who acquired the message and call 14 years ago, said she would retire from active duty on May 5 to double the teams. Skype users have 10 weeks to decide what they want to do with their account.
It is not clear how many people are affected. The most recent numbers that Microsoft shared were in 2023, when he said he had over 36 million users – far from the top of Skype from 300 million users.
“We know this is a big deal for Skype users and we are very grateful for supporting Skype and all the courses that have taken into account teams over the past seven years” JeffPresident of Microsoft 365 collaborative applications and platforms, he told TechCrunch in an interview this week. “At this point, putting all the focus behind the teams will allow us to give a simpler message and drive faster innovation.”
From now until May 5, users will be able to convey all their contacts and chat with Microsoft data. Alternatively, users can download Skype data using the built -in app tool.
The business case
The news will be a little surprised for those who followed Skype in recent years and in many ways writing has been on the wall since 2016, when Microsoft debuted the teams.
While Microsoft had launched a specific Skype for the business product in 2015, the arrival of the teams marked a new direction for Microsoft in the Cloud communications field. Many groups were likened to a slack clone, but the biggest ambition was to build a platform that would give room for collaboration and communication in a wide range of Microsoft and other applications and including video and text conversations – a direct coating with Skype.
Microsoft then revealed plans for the gradual removal of Skype for business in 2017, Completing these efforts four years laterIn 2021. In the same year, Microsoft chose the teams as the integrated selection communication application in Windows 11, reducing Skype on the sidelines.
Fast forward until December 2024, TechCrunch reported that Microsoft had stopped letting Skype users to add credit in their accounts or buy Skype phone numbersPressing users into monthly subscriptions and skype-to-phone designs.
And so this leads us to today’s news, marking the end of a brand and a company that was one of the first major technology companies to start from Europe at Dawdling Days of Dial-Up.
Skype’s Knell Death comes two years after Microsoft’s launch, Microsoft launched an entirely remodeled, analog work and tissue surface. In these two years, Teper says that the minutes that consumers call in groups have increased four times, although he refused to say how many consumers are the basis of 320 million users.
‘It’s on a fairly high scale that we feel great for the application [Teams] For personal use, “Teper said.” We believe we have the kilometers below our consumer adoption zone, [who are] Using groups in their personal lives. We thought [shutting down Skype] For a while, but we felt that the product had to show the adoption of the end user with consumers who told us it was ready. ”
And Microsoft believes that consumers are ready.
User numbers
While Skype has made a new era of internet -based communication, starting with the voice before expanding to video and files, the arrival of smartphones and the achievement of new messages have received a tax on Skype users through the years. For the framework, WhatsApp exceeded 2 billion users in 2020.
When Skype filed for IPO in 2010, it revealed 560 million registered users and 124 million monthly active users. But instead of moving publicly after spinoff from eBay (which had acquired it in 2005), Microsoft deposited a bid of $ 8.5 billion for Skype in 2011 and grew up the platform at a top of a top 300 million users in 2013.
Microsoft has not been the habit of breaking Skype users in the coming years, although it has teased the casual data point. At the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, the company unveiling That Skype had increased 70% month in a month to 40 million daily users, as people were looking for ways to stay in touch with loved ones during Lockdown-a trend that created similar overments on competitive platforms such as Zoom.
The most recent update provided by Microsoft was through a Post blog published in early 2023 Announcing an integration between Skype and the Bing search engine, where he revealed that “more than 36 million people use Skype daily to connect through phone calls and conversations” worldwide.
The long and short of this, however, is that the growth of the teams and the flatlining of Skype is one reason why Microsoft is now calculating it is a good time to go to teams.
“Skype got a blow – as did the teams – during the pandemic, and Skype was largely quite stable in the last two years,” Teper said. “And we felt the time, and the feedback was such that we could make the move.”
Phone house
Microsoft encourages users to move Groups free. This offers some additional features that are not available on Skype, such as integration of a calendar, but free-free teams have no other basic features that were features of Skype-in particular, the phone feature that allowed users to call mobile and fixed numbers, as well as receive telephone calls with a Skype phone number.
Microsoft began to reject these services in December, preventing users from adding further credit to their accounts, while stopping the purchase of Skype numbers. Users were still able to make calls to phone numbers with a valid monthly subscription or any remaining credit they had, but the subscription renewals will end on April 3.
For old -fashioned users who still have credit in their accounts, Microsoft will make a skype dial pad available both on the Web Skype Portal and in groups for an indefinite period.
‘We will support [this] As long as users have credit and use this functionality ”, Microsoft VP of the product Amit Fulay said to TechCrunch.
Despite the incarnation of groups by offering a phone call functionalityFulay has confirmed that groups for free will not support PSTN services (public telephone network), mainly due to the shift of consumer trends.
“We have examined the use of telephony for a while on Skype and the plans have changed. The use has changed and this is a step towards it,” he said. “People have mobile telephony plans and when this [telephony] Functionality came out many years ago, this didn’t happen. ”
System migration
During the transition period, Skype users will be able to download the team app and connect to Skype credentials, with all their conversations and contacts automatically migrate. The Skype application will continue to work in parallel, until May 5, 2025.
Alternatively, users will be able to export their data, although in fact they are probably not so much that they will be able to do it with the introduction of anywhere else.
“We wanted to ensure that during this transition, people do not lose their contacts, their memories,” Fulay said. “We want to make sure we keep all the things that people have shared. And if they choose to come to groups, we will restore all their contacts and data.”
If a user does not take any action by May 5, Skype says that it will retain users’ data by the end of the year, after which it will be deleted.
Blurry lines
One of the long routes of all this is the way the lines between business and consumers have blurred, in part to social rules on technology and trends such as remote work.
Skype started as a consumer product that spread to the business sphere, while the teams started as a business product that fell to the consumer. Groups today, but still sense Like a business product, especially because of its name. Do families and friends really see themselves as part of a big “group”?
Teper, for his part, does not see this as a problem, since many of its existing products are already exceeding the limits of use.
‘I think a lot of people will make the transition [from Skype to Teams]”He said.” If you think of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, these are brands working for business and personal use for people. We have children and parents who do their work with word and budgets in Excel, so we have a good precedent for our tools used in personal and professional life. “
