After 21 years of videoconferencing and voice calls, Skype is going to the history books. Microsoft has confirmed plans to shut down the once-dominant app on 5 May and replace it with the free version of Microsoft Teams.
“Starting in May 2025, Skype will no longer be available. Over the coming days you can sign in to Microsoft Teams free with your Skype account to stay connected with all your chats and contacts. Thank you being part of Skype,” reads the official post on X/Twitter.
According to The Verge, current users will be able to log into Microsoft Teams and access their conversation history, group chats, and contacts without needing to create another account, or choose to export their data. Domestic and international call support is also being phased out, with a tool available to help those who aren’t in favour of Teams migration view their chat history.
The industry giant will honour existing Skype credits, but newcomers won’t have access to premium features that allow them to make or receive international and domestic calls. Users with Skype numbers are required to port them over to another provider, as the service is no longer supported.
The termination comes 14 years after Microsoft bought Skype for US$8.5 billion in 2011, marking its biggest acquisition at the time. The former go-to calling app enjoyed huge popularity for decades before falling off in recent years, despite a pandemic uplift that saw its contemporaries, including Zoom, Google Meet, and Cisco WebEx, gain a bigger user base. Per Bloomberg, Skype clocked 300 million monthly users in 2016, but the number had plummeted to 23 million by 2023.
Si Jia is a casual geek at heart – or as casual as someone with Sephiroth’s theme on her Spotify playlist can get. A fan of movies, games, and Japanese culture, Si Jia’s greatest weakness is the Steam Summer Sale. Or any Steam sale, really.
Kevin Low
