Skype has for decades been a the go-to calling app for many. Well, it’s time to move on, because Microsoft is shuttering the popular app in May and moving users to Microsoft Teams. If that sounds alarming, don’t worry. Here are the details on what you need to do.
Skype is closing.
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Jeff Teper, president of Microsoft 365 collaborative apps and platforms, in an interview with The Verge offered this advice: “Skype users will be in control, they’ll have the choice. They can migrate their conversation history and their contacts out and move on if they want, or they can migrate to Teams,” he said.
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Microsoft is “shuttering Skype to focus on developing new features for Teams, including artificial intelligence tools,” said Bloomberg’s Matt Day, citing Teper. “The company is working to infuse AI into its product suite, while keeping a lid on spending that isn’t part of that effort.”
That report says that the 300 million monthly users Skype had in 2016 had dropped to 36 million by 2023.
Moving to Teams means that you’ll be able to export your data including photos and conversation history. There’s also a tool made by Microsoft to easily view existing Skype chat history if you decide against moving to Teams.
Skype will stay online only until May 5, so that’s around eight weeks to decide what you want to do.
“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,” said Amit Fulay, vice president of product at Microsoft, according to The Verge.
With this move, though, the ability to call domestic or international numbers is going to disappear, which will be bad news for many. “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,” said Fulay.
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