Microsoft has announced that the official closure of Skype will be completed within May 2025, bidding farewell to this once dominant internet calling and messaging platform.
Microsoft purchased Skype in 2011 for 8.5 billion USD with the aim of complementing its position at the forefront of digital communications. However with time the relevance of Skype has gone down due to increased competition in the Market.
Why is Microsoft shutting down Skype? Here are Reasons!
The cause for Skype’s shutdown is its sharp fall in user base. In 2016, Skype had over 300 million active users per month whereas in 2023, it came to just 36 million daily users. Meanwhile, Microsoft Teams soared to 320 million monthly users and making it the new priority for the company.
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 for being part of Skype pic.twitter.com/EZ2wJLOQ1a
— Skype (@Skype) February 28, 2025
Skype’s decline was also caused by the rise of competitors such as WhatsApp, Zoom, Telegram and Slack which offered fast communication, easy integrations and better user experiences.
Also frequent redesigns and reliability trouble spaced a lot of users to annoyances. The issues consisted of missed calls, sync problems and UI alterations deemed unnecessary, all these problems contributing to further operations in loss of user base. Even introductions of Snapchat-like features had little impact.
Despite shutting down Skype, Microsoft has promised that those who worked for the platform would be reassigned within the company. Microsoft will now seek to innovate extremely carefully into Teams powered by AI since it turns out that Teams now wants the spotlight in workplace communications.
Various users taking social media are thanking Skype for teaching how to walk to various platforms which are now. Skype is indeed the leader or the creator of all the apps that we have now!
Skype is shutting down for good pic.twitter.com/Ri88C71Jgx
— memes (@memescentrai) March 1, 2025
