‘End of the road’: Microsoft to discontinue Skype in May

By Eugene Nicklaus S. Laqui

Microsoft has announced the permanent shutdown of video-calling service Skype to focus on Microsoft Teams, the company’s more successful platform which offers similar services.

Modern communication was widely accepted to have been revolutionized by Skype after it entered the business in 2003.

But its parent company, Microsoft, announced last week that the internet video-calling service is set to “drop its calls.”

Time to say goodbye

Microsoft has confirmed that Skype will no longer be in service starting from May 5, 2025, as part of its effort to prioritize its other internet-based calling services, such as Microsoft Teams, as competition continues to get tougher and demands become more complex.

Skype experienced heavy decline in its traffic due to the fast-paced market against Google, FaceTime and Zoom. Once dominating the communication industry on the Internet, it has now become a thing of the past that offers less compared to its competitors.

According to Microsoft, Skype had only 23 million monthly users in 2020 and has not improved since then, compared to Teams, which has 320 million monthly users.

Despite millions of users remaining loyal to Skype, Microsoft said its monthly patrons were far better two decades ago, reaching its peak of at least 150 million users in 2011.

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Microsoft also assured that upon the discontinuing of Skype in May, its users would be given free access and conveniently transfer their accounts to Teams.

“In order to streamline our free consumer communications offerings so we can more easily adapt to customer needs, we will be retiring Skype in May 2025 to focus on Microsoft Teams (free), our modern communications and collaboration hub,” wrote Microsoft on its website.

Two decades of video-calling

Skype was founded in Estonia in 2003 as an alternative mode of communication to landlines, which at that time were expensive, especially for international calls.

Due to its popular demand after being launched internationally, Microsoft acquired the titular Internet calling service in 2014 and outbid Google for a whopping $8.5 billion.

It was Microsoft’s biggest acquisition at the time, proving to be an advantage for its business for years, as Skype became the “blueprint” of today’s modern video-calling service.

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