Microsoft has announced that it will shut down Skype on May 5, 2025, ending the 21-year run of the pioneering voice and video calling service that helped revolutionize online communication.
The tech giant, which acquired Skype for $8.5 billion in 2011, made this announcement on Friday, and encouraged users to migrate to its free Teams app, which will automatically import Skype contacts, message history, and call logs.
“We’ve learned a lot from Skype over the years that we’ve put into Teams,” said Jeff Teper, president of Microsoft 365 collaborative apps. “We felt like now is the time because we can be simpler for the market, for our customer base, and we can deliver more innovation faster just by being focused on Teams.”
Skype users will have approximately 60 days to decide whether to switch to Teams or export their data. During this transition period, Microsoft will maintain interoperability between the platforms, allowing messages sent from Teams to be delivered to contacts still using Skype.
One significant change: Microsoft is discontinuing Skype’s telephony features that allow calls to landlines and cell phones. Existing Skype credits and subscriptions will be honored in Teams until the end of their next renewal period, but no new calling plans will be offered to consumers.
“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 wasn’t available and mobile data plans were very expensive,” explained Amit Fulay, Microsoft’s Vice President of Product.
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Founded in Estonia in 2003 by Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, Skype quickly gained popularity for offering free internet-based calls. By 2004, it had 11 million users, growing to 405 million by 2008.
Despite its early success, Skype struggled to compete in the mobile era against services like FaceTime, WhatsApp, and Zoom. While usage spiked briefly during the pandemic’s early stages, Microsoft reports that user numbers have remained flat in recent years.
