After launching the market to make calls on the Internet 23 years ago, Skype firm. Microsoft, who acquired the messaging and call application 14 years ago, said that she will remove it from active service on May 5 to double the teams. Skype users have 10 weeks to decide what they want to do with their account.
We do not know how many people are affected. The most recent figures that Microsoft had shared were in 2023 when he said that he had more than 36 million users – a long path compared to the Skype peak of 300 million users.
“We know that this is a big problem for our Skype users, and we are very grateful for their support for Skype and all the learning that has taken into account the teams in the past seven years”, ” Jeff teperMicrosoft 365 President Collaborative Apps and Platforms, Techcrunch told an interview this week. “At this point, putting our entire goal behind the teams will allow us to give a simpler message and conduct a faster innovation.”
By May 5, users will have the opportunity to migrate all their contacts and chat data on the Microsoft team platform. Alternatively, users can download their Skype data using the integrated application export tool.
Profitability analysis
The news will not surprise those who have followed Skype in recent years; And in many ways, writing has been on the wall since 2016, when Microsoft has made its team debut.
While Microsoft had launched a specific Skype product for Business in 2015, the arrival of the teams reported a new direction for Microsoft in the Cloud communication space. Many teams have compared a slack clone, but the biggest ambition was to build a platform that would give space for collaboration and communication on a wide range of Microsoft and other applications, and which included video and text chat – direct overlap with Skype.
Microsoft then revealed plans to eliminate Skype for business in 2017, concluding these efforts four years laterIn 2021. The same year, Microsoft selected teams as an integrated communication application of choice on Windows 11, relegating Skype to the key.
Quick advance until December 2024, Techcrunch reported that Microsoft had stopped letting Skype users add credit to their accounts, or buy Skype phone numbersPushing users to monthly subscriptions and Skype plans on phone.
And so it takes us to today’s news, signaling the end of a brand and a company that was one of the first major technological startups to get out of Europe in the DAWDLING DAYS OF DIAL-UP.
The Knell of Skype’s death comes two years after Microsoft started deploying a desk and a web application of fully reconstructed Redichic teams. During these two years, Teper says that consumer call minutes in the teams have multiplied by four, although he refused to say how many consumers represent his 320 million bases.
“It is on a large scale that we feel good in the application [Teams] For personal use, ”said Teper. “We believe that we have the mileage to our credit on the adoption by consumers, [who are] Use teams in their personal life. We thought of [shutting down Skype] For a while, but we really had the impression that the product should show the adoption of the end user with consumers telling us that it was ready. »»
And Microsoft thinks that consumers are now ready.
User numbers
While Skype has inaugurated a new era of communication on the Internet, starting with the voice before expanding video and file sharing, the arrival of smartphones and a band of new messaging applications have wreaked havoc on the number of Skype users over the years. For the context, WhatsApp saved 2 billion users in 2020.
When Skype filed an IPO in 2010, it revealed 560 million registered users and 124 million monthly active users. But rather than becoming a public following its ebay spin-off (which had acquired it in 2005), Microsoft filed an offer of $ 8.5 billion for Skype in 2011, and increased the platform for a peak of 300 million users in 2013.
Microsoft did not get into the habit of bursting Skype user numbers in the following years, although it has packed the occasional data point. At the start of the pandemic in March 2020, the company revealed This skype had increased by 70% per month to 40 million daily users, while people were looking for ways to stay in touch with dear beings during locking – a trend that generated similar overvoltages in rival platforms such as zoom.
The most recent update provided by Microsoft was via a Blog article published at the beginning of 2023 Annant integration between Skype and its Bing search engine, where it revealed that “more than 36 million people use Skype daily to connect via telephone and cats” on a global scale.
Long and along this, however, is that the growth of the teams and the Skype platform is one of the reasons why Microsoft believes that the moment is the right time to do all on the teams.
“Skype has taken a bump – just like the teams – during the pandemic, and Skype has been largely stable in the past two years,” said Teper. “And we felt the time, and the comments, were such that we could take the plunge.”
Call home
Microsoft encourages users to move Free teams. This offers additional features that are not available in Skype, such as skills in the calendar, but free teams have no other key features that were Skype characteristics – in particular, telephone call features that allowed users to call mobile and fixed numbers, as well as receive phone calls with a Skype phone number.
Microsoft began to depreciate these services in December, preventing users from adding any additional credit to their accounts while putting an end to the purchase of Skype numbers. Users were still able to make calls to telephone numbers with a valid monthly subscription or any remaining credit they had, but the subscription renewals will end on April 3.
For inherited users who always have credits in their accounts, Microsoft will put a Skype dial available both in the Skype web portal and in the teams for an indefinite period.
“We will support [this] As long as users have a credit and they use this functionality ”, Microsoft VP of the product Amit Fulay Techcrunch told.
Despite the entrepreneurial embodiment of the teams Offer phone call featuresFulay confirmed that free teams do not support Pstn (Public Switged Phone Network) Services, mainly due to the change in consumer trends.
“We are considering the use of telephony for some time on Skype, and the models have changed, the use has changed, and it is a step towards this,” he said. “People have mobile data plans, and when it [telephony] The functionality was released many years ago, this was not the case. »»
System migration
During the transition period, Skype users will be able to download the Teams application and connect with their Skype identification information, with all their cats and contacts automatically. The Skype application itself will continue to operate in tandem, until May 5, 2025.
Alternatively, users will be able to export their data, although in reality there are probably not many things that they can do in terms of importation elsewhere.
“We wanted to make sure that during this transition, people do not lose their contacts, their memories,” said Fulay. “We want to make sure to preserve everything people have shared. And if they choose to come to teams, we will restore all their contacts and data. »»
If a user takes no measure by May 5, Skype says that it will keep the user data until the end of the year, after which it will be deleted.
Blurred lines
One of the big points to remember from all this is how the boundaries between the company and the consumer kingdoms have blurred, partly due to societal standards around technology and trends such as remote work.
Skype began as a consumer product that has spread in the commercial sphere, while the teams began as a commercial product which was devoted to the consumer. Teams today, however, feel As a commercial product, in particular because of its name. Do families and friends really consider themselves to be part of a large “team”?
Teper, for its part, does not see this as a problem, since many of its existing products already transcend the limits of use cases.
“I think a lot of people will make the transition [from Skype to Teams]”He said. “If you are thinking of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, these are brands that work for businesses and personal uses for people. We have children and parents who make their speech, budgets and excellent homework, so we have a good preceding on our tools used in personal and professional life. »»
