Microsoft: Skype for consumers will not work in Teams

Microsoft will continue to work on Skype in the future, despite the growing popularity of Teams. The company tells VentureBeat that it has no plans to merge Skype into Teams and that new features will continue to appear in Skype.

Microsoft plans to continue investing in the consumer version of Skype in the near future, Microsoft’s Jeff Teper told VentureBeat. A few months ago, there were rumors that Microsoft wanted to integrate the consumer version into Teams. A consumer version was released at the end of March. Teper now says that Skype and Teams can coexist perfectly. He draws a parallel with Facebook, which also has different communication tools with Instagram and WhatsApp.

Like Facebook, Microsoft plans to make the apps work together. It is not clear exactly how this should work. Teper says Skype has enough fans to continue investing in the program. As a result, there will also be ‘new features’ in the program, but what those are, Teper does not say. He does say that he expects Teams to become more popular in the future and that users will probably prefer it to Skype.

Microsoft recently released new usage figures for Skype, the communications program it acquired in 2011, for the first time since 2015. The number of daily Skype users has increased by more than 70 percent since the outbreak of the corona crisis in March. Skype now has 40 million daily active users.