Microsoft to Shut Down Skype, Shift Focus to Teams
**Microsoft to Shut Down Skype, Shift Focus to Teams**
By Aaron Holmes
8 hours ago
Source: The Information
Microsoft will shut down its Skype videoconferencing app in March, the company said on Friday, as Microsoft focuses its efforts on its Teams meeting app. Microsoft will shift Skype staff to instead work on Teams, and users with existing Skype accounts will be able to move their accounts to Teams for free, Microsoft said.
Microsoft acquired Skype in 2011 for $8.5 billion, its largest acquisition at the time. While Skype was initially one of the most widely used consumer applications for video calls, the app's user base steadily declined from 300 million users in 2016 to 36 million last year, according to company disclosures, while competitors like Apple's FaceTime, Snapchat, WhatsApp, and Google Meet gained ground.
Meanwhile, Teams—which Microsoft built from scratch and marketed primarily to business customers as a workplace meeting software beginning in 2016—had more than 320 million users as of last year. More recently, Microsoft has added AI features to Teams, charging business customers an extra fee monthly for features including AI-generated transcripts and summaries of video calls.