Microsoft has announced that it closes the popular video -service -service skype.
After a run of 21 years, the 2 billion users of Skype no longer have access to their accounts from May 2025.
Microsoft encourages users to migrate to its free teams app.
'In the coming days you can register for free at Microsoft teams with your Skype account to stay connected to all your chats and contacts. Thank you for being part of Skype, 'The Video call service on X Friday.
Users can also export their Skype data during this time. Microsoft stops selling monthly Skype subscriptions, but users with credits can continue to use them in teams.
Skype was launched in 2003 and soon became popular as a way for people to talk to each other without paying a telephone company.
But as soon as the smartphone era struck, the users fell and this was exacerbated as similar services such as Zoom and Microsoft teams that became popular during the COVID-19 Pandemie.
“Over the years we have learned a lot from Skype that we have put into teams while we have developed teams for the past seven to eight years,” Jeff Teper, President of Microsoft 365 Collaborative Apps and Platforms, told CNBC.
Microsoft has announced that it closes the popular video -Calling -Service Skype
“But we had the feeling that it is now time, because we can be easier for the market, for our customer base, and we can deliver more innovation faster by focusing on teams.”
In 2023, Skype had 36 million daily active users, a decrease of 40 million in 2020, according to Microsoft.
In the meantime, the number of minutes people have spent on team calls has quadrupled CNBC in the past two years.
It is not clear how many active Skype users there are today, so it is difficult to say how many people will be influenced by the closure.
At its peak in 2016, Microsoft said that the call service had more than 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 lessons that have experienced in teams for the past seven years,” Techcrunch told Techcrunch.
Microsoft launched teams in 2016 to build a platform that would make cloud communication and cooperation in the apps of the company and others possible.
But this new system was in direct competition with Skype.
Only two years after the Tech giant Skype launched for the business world in 2015, it announced plans to retire and finally did it in 2021.
Skype was officially put aside when Microsoft chose the integrated communication of choice that same year as the Integrated Communications app on Windows 11.
