Skype, the video calling and messaging service, officially shuts down after 22 years

“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,” said Jeff Teper, Microsoft president of collaborative apps and platforms, said at the time.

Microsoft decided to shut down Skype to focus its resources on developing its Microsoft Teams app, which includes all the services that Skype provided plus more. As part of the transition, Microsoft announced it would offer a free version of Teams to all consumers who previously utilized Skype.

“With Teams, users have access to many of the same core features they use in Skype, such as one-on-one calls and group calls, messaging, and file sharing,” Teper said. “Additionally, Teams offers enhanced features like hosting meetings, managing calendars, and building and joining communities for free.”

Teper also stated that Teams has established a presence in the video conferencing market and said the product is currently used by “hundreds of millions” of people to connect with others at home, school, and work. He also emphasized that “the number of minutes spent in meetings by consumer users of Teams” has quadrupled in the last two years.

Skype was created in 2003 by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis as a service to make calls over the internet. Over the years, it evolved into a free video call service and messaging application. Reports show that over 300 million people had used Skype at its peak. However, Skype’s clientele dipped over the years as consumers sought to use other products that provided competition in the market, such as WhatsApp and Slack.

During the COVID pandemic, as video calling services became a staple for communication, consumers opted for services as Zoom and Teams over Skype. By 2020, the number of Skype users dropped to 40 million. This downward trend continued. By 2023, only 36 million people were using Skype, according to reports.