Skype to shut down in May, Microsoft says [Video]

Skype will ring for the last time on May 5 as owner Microsoft retires the two-decade-old internet calling service that redefined how people connect across borders.

Shutting down Skype will help Microsoft focus on its homegrown Teams service by simplifying its communication offerings, the software giant said on Friday.

Founded in 2003, Skype’s audio and video calls quickly disrupted the landline industry in the early 2000s and made the company a household name boasting hundreds of millions of users at its peak. But the platform has struggled to keep up in the face of competitors that include Zoom, Meta’s WhatsApp, Salesforce’s Slack and WeChat from Tencent in recent years.

The decline was partly because Skype’s underlying technology was not suited for the smartphone era.

When the pandemic and work-from-home fuelled the need for online business calls, Microsoft batted for Teams by aggressively integrating it with other Office apps to tap …