It's the end of an era. Microsoft is closing down Skype in May and substituting it with the consumer version of Microsoft Teams for free. Current users of Skype will be able to log in to the app for Microsoft Teams and have their message history, group chats, and contacts all immediately accessible without having to sign up again, or instead export their data. Microsoft is also sunsetting support for calling domestic or international numbers.
"Skype users will be in control, they'll have a choice," Microsoft 365 collaborative apps and platforms president Jeff Teper tells in an interview. "They can export their conversation history and their contacts out and move on if they want to, or they can export to Teams.
If you prefer to transition and take your Skype information with you, the data transferred will include conversation history and pictures. Microsoft even created a facility to access stored Skype chat history easily if you don't feel like transitioning to Teams.
Skype will remain online until May 5th, so existing users will have around 60 days to decide whether they want to switch to Microsoft Teams or export their data. “If they do want to come to Teams then the first-run is pretty instantaneous because we’ve already done the work on the backend to restore their contacts, message history, and call logs,” says Amit Fulay, vice president of product at Microsoft.
The shift to Microsoft Teams will preserve Skype group conversations, and within the 60-day timeframe, Microsoft will also preserve interoperability so you can send messages to contacts on Teams and it will reach friends who are still on Skype.
If you do switch over to Microsoft Teams, though, there's one major aspect of Skype that's going away. Microsoft is stripping away the telephony components that enable you to call domestic or international numbers or individuals' cell phones. "Part of the reason is we look at the usage and the trends, and this functionality was great at the time when voice over IP (VoIP) wasn't available and mobile data plans were very expensive," Fulay explains. If you look at the future, that's not a thing we want to be in."
Microsoft will continue to recognize current Skype credits, but new customers will not be able to get access to paid Skype functionality that enables you to receive and make international and domestic calls. Current Skype subscription customers will continue to be able to use Skype credits and subscriptions within Microsoft Teams until the close of their subsequent renewal period. Current Skype Number holders will also be required to switch their number over to another company, since Microsoft is no longer providing this as well.
The Skype Dial Pad will be included in Teams on a temporary basis for current credits and subscriptions, but Microsoft is not going to sell calling plans to Teams consumers like it does to businesses. "The world has really moved on," Teper says. "Probably the biggest thing is higher bandwidth and lower data plan cost, from us and others, has really driven almost all of the traffic to VoIP."
The entry of consumers on their way from dialing phone numbers using Skype is also a significant reason why the service is closing down almost 14 years after Microsoft initially bought the service for $8.5 billion. In the past decade, technologies such as FaceTime, Messenger, and WhatsApp have made it easy to reach friends using messaging, voice calls, and video calls in a manner that Microsoft couldn't match using Skype and its myriad design changes.
That was especially true at the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic, when customers swarmed to Zoom over Skype. "The user base for Skype actually increased when the pandemic started, and has been fairly flat since," concedes Teper. "It hasn't diminished in some cataclysmic manner. It has been fairly flat the past couple years. We hope we'll move most Skype users… but we want to ensure that the users understand they're in control."
Microsoft will now exclusively concentrate on Teams for consumers, following the rollout of the consumer version in 2020. Microsoft indicated that it was still entirely committed to Skype at the time, but it has been obvious over recent years that the company was lining up for Skype to be phased out eventually. In December, Microsoft put an end to Skype credits and numbers in favor of subscriptions, further evidence that Skype's demise was approaching.
"We initially wanted one experience between work and life… but Teams was new and that wasn't realistically where we were at in 2020," Teper reveals. "So we just kept investing in Skype, and about two to three years ago we began to bring in the free Teams consumer experience with the new client.". We didn't want to wait until adoption was at a scale where we could be fairly sure it was the right moment.
The Skype retirement will not come with job reductions, either, at least not initially. "There's one team, which is Microsoft Teams and Skype. Behind the scenes it has actually transformed to a shared team," states Teper. "There won't be layoffs, those individuals are going to be working on making things more awesome — whether it's cool end user features or AI innovation, it's really about doubling down on Teams."
Source: Ther Verge