Microsoft will in May this year shut down Skype, a two-decade-old online voice and video calling service that it acquired in 2011.
The tech giant said in a post on X social platform that it will now focus on Teams, a platform within Microsoft 365 that serves as a hub for teamwork, enabling real-time collaboration, communication, meetings, file sharing, and integration with other Microsoft applications.
“Starting in May 2025, Skype will no longer be available,” Microsoft said on Friday, February 28.
This comes 14 years after Microsoft bought the service for $8.5 billion in cash after outbidding Google and Facebook. At the time, the service had about 150 million monthly users; by 2020, that number had dipped to about 23 million, despite a brief growth during the Covid-19 pandemic.
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With its audio and video calls, Skype, which was founded in 2003 by Scandinavians Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis in Estonia, disrupted the landline market in the early 2000s. But it has struggled to keep up with rivals like Zoom and Salesforce’s Slack in recent years – Skype’s technology comes off as less suited for the smartphone era thanks to the fact that it offered free voice calls between computers and affordable rates for calls to landlines and mobile phones.
When the pandemic and work from home fueled the need for online business calls, for example, Microsoft put Teams first by aggressively integrating it with other Office apps to tap corporate users, once a major base for Skype.
Online video communication was once the near exclusive purview of Skype before the likes of FaceTime, Zoom and Google Hangouts took over. Skype was an early example of a tech product that was so ubiquitous it was used as a verb. Users would “Skype” someone in much the same way they would Google, or WhatsApp something.
Over the years, Microsoft struggled to integrate Skype into its suite of tools and could not meet the moment when the company began seeing competition from Apple’s FaceTime and Google’s various communications app attempts. And when Microsoft launched its collaboration product Teams in 2017 that quickly took priority.
“We are honored to have been part of the journey,” Microsoft said on Friday. “Skype has been an integral part of shaping modern communications.”
During the transition, Skype users will be able to log into Teams for free on any supported device using their existing credentials, with chats and contacts migrating automatically.
Move to Microsoft Teams for free: Over the coming days, Microsoft will roll out the ability for Skype users to sign into Teams (free) on any supported device using their Skype credentials—starting today with those who are part of both the Teams and Skype Insider programs. By logging in to Teams with a Skype account, chats and contacts will automatically appear in the app so you can quickly pick up where you left off.
During the transition period, Teams users can call and chat with Skype users and Skype users can do the same with Teams users. This helps ensure you can stay connected with everyone, regardless of the platform you’re using during this transition.
Export your Skype data: If you prefer not to migrate to Teams, you can instead export your data including chats, contacts, and call history.
Skype will remain available until May 5, 2025, giving users time to explore Teams and decide on the option that works best for them.
