Microsoft officially shut down Skype

Microsoft has officially ended support for Skype after 22 years and will focus solely on Teams moving forward.

Microsoft had previously announced it would shut down Skype on May 5. Now, Skype has finally been shut down, and it is still unknown how many people were still using the service at this time, but numbers from 2023 indicated 36 million daily users, a huge decline from the 300 million customers at the peak of the service’s popularity.

However, people can switch to Teams with their Skype account, with their conversation logs and contact list automatically migrating. Originally launched in 2003, Skype was acquired by Microsoft in 2011 for $8.5 billion.

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The once-popular service did not remain central to Microsoft’s strategy over the years, however, as the company released Microsoft Teams in 2016, a service that integrates messaging and video calls on the same platform.

Over the years, Microsoft’s focus on Teams grew, and Skype lost its place to other popular messaging services with video calls, such as Discord.

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ByFolake Balogun

Folake Balogun is a renowned tech journalist who offers insightful and critical analysis of the African rapidly growing digital economy, particularly within Nigeria. She closely monitors the health of the African startup ecosystem by covering significant venture capital trends, investment deals, and the challenges faced by emerging firms. Known for her deep dives into the fintech sector, she covers the evolution of digital payments, dynamics of major financial innovations and also extends to emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the future of connectivity by providing context to their economic and social impact.