The Fall of Skype: When Strategy Rules over Sentiment

In May 2025, Microsoft is officially retiring Skype after more than two decades as a pioneer of internet calling. Once synonymous with online voice and video chat, Skype’s prominence has faded dramatically in recent years. At first glance, this decline might look like a misstep for Microsoft. In reality, it reflects a deliberate strategic pivot: Microsoft chose to pursue a more lucrative market with Microsoft Teams, rather than fight to keep Skype on top in the changing consumer landscape. The result is a story of a legacy product’s sunset coinciding with the triumph of a new platform, demonstrating a calculated move that paid off.

From Pioneer to Prey: Skype and the Rise of New Communication Apps

Skype launched in 2003 and quickly became a trailblazer in internet-based calling, attracting hundreds of millions of users worldwide. By the mid-2010s, Skype peaked at over 300 million monthly active users and had become a household name. Microsoft acquired Skype in 2011 for $8.5 billion when the service had around 150 million monthly users. However, over the following decade, Skype’s growth stalled and then sharply declined — by 2020, only about 23 million monthly users remained active on Skype (restofworld.org).