Skype, the application of online video calls, stopped operating on Monday, after 22 years of existence. Pioneer of internet calls in the early 2000s, Skype is Today exceeded by the generalization of this technology and the emergence of other services such as Zoom.
“From May 2025, Skype will no longer be available,” said Microsoft at the end of February, who held Skype, on X. “In the coming days, you can register on the free version of Microsoft Teams with your Skype account to stay connected to your conversations and contacts,” said the group.
External contents
This external content cannot be displayed because it is likely to collect personal data. To see this content you must authorize the category Social networks.
Accept More info
>> Read also: The Skype platform, a pioneer of internet calls, will disappear
Visioconference pioneer
With the disappearance of the pioneer application in the midfielder’s middle, it’s a page that turns. Founded in 2003 by Scandinavian entrepreneurs, Skype has indeed changed the rules of communication. In the era where calls and SMS are expensive, especially internationally, the application has short-circuited telephone operators and offered a novelty: free calls via the Internet.
-Success is not long in coming. In 2005, two years after its creation, it had more than 50 million registered. That same year, Skype introduced video calls, opening up a new era. The application was then bought in 2011 by the American giant of Microsoft software, which spends $ 8.5 billion to acquire it.
Strong competition
In 2016, Skype had around 300 million users and users, but the rise of many competitors stopped its growth. Facetime, WhatsApp, Google Meet, Messenger, then zoom, catapulted on the front of the stage during the Pandemic of Cavid-19, also offer video call services.
Faced with the democratization of smartphones and the development of these similar applications, Skype does not make the weight and is also faced with technical problems. Rather than continuing to develop it, Microsoft makes the radical choice in 2017 to focus on its new application, Teams.
Today, despite the Skype stop, the other applications will continue to evolve. Zoom offers in particular to smooth the skin, to create an avatar clone which visually replaces us and which can speak in a hundred languages. If technology is not yet completely to the point, it could, in turn, be revolutionary.
Radio subject: Salomé Laurent
Web adaptation: Emilie Délétroz with AFP
