Skype users have until May 5, 2025 to decide what happens to their accounts. Microsoft announced it is closing the app after it helped start internet calling 23 years ago, and it wants people to move to Teams.
Ten weeks is the window from the announcement. In that time, users can log in to the Teams app with their Skype credentials and have chats and contacts carried over automatically. The Skype app keeps working alongside Teams until the deadline. Anyone who would rather leave can export their data with the built-in tool, though TechCrunch noted there is probably little they can do with the file elsewhere.
People who do nothing are not wiped out on May 5. Skype says it will keep their data until the end of the year, then delete it.
What Teams Free cannot do
Microsoft points users to Teams Free, which adds calendar integrations. It leaves out something many Skype users relied on: calling mobile and landline numbers, or receiving calls on a Skype phone number. Amit Fulay, Microsoft’s VP of product, confirmed that Teams Free will not support those telephone services. “People have mobile data plans, and when this functionality came out many years ago, that wasn’t the case,” he said.
The phone features were already being wound down. Since December 2024, users could no longer add credit or buy Skype numbers. Calls to phone numbers continued only with a valid monthly subscription or leftover credit, and subscription renewals end on April 3. Users who still hold credit will get a Skype Dial Pad in the Skype web portal and in Teams, for as long as people have credit and use it.
Why now
Jeff Teper, president of Microsoft 365 collaborative apps and platforms, said putting all the focus behind Teams “will let us give a simpler message and drive faster innovation.” He said Microsoft had considered closing Skype for a while but wanted consumers to show Teams was ready. Consumer calling minutes in Teams have grown fourfold in the two years since the rebuilt desktop and web app began rolling out, he said. Teams has 320 million users; he would not say how many are consumers.
Skype’s numbers went the other way. Microsoft bought it in 2011 with an $8.5 billion bid, and it peaked at 300 million users in 2013. The last figure Microsoft gave, in early 2023, was more than 36 million people using it daily. Teper said Skype had been “pretty stable” in recent years.
Teper does not think the Teams name will put families off. Word and Excel work for both business and personal use, he said. “We have kids and parents doing their homework in Word, and budgets in Excel.”
