Microsoft has announced a pretty drastic change to the ever so popular Skype app. The company has announced that while it remains committed to provide support for Skype to consumers running iOS 8, Android 4.03 and Windows 10 Mobile and newer, there will no longer be support for consumers running devices with older operating systems.
This means that while Skype will technically work on older devices for now, as time goes by, the app may no longer function as intended. This announcement however, wouldn’t have that much of an impact to existing Android users; because the amount of Android users using versions lower than 4.03 represents about 2% of the entire user base of the operating system – according to statistics by Android (as of 11 July 2016).
The same can be said about iOS, which has merely 3% of its overall users still on older versions of iOS (lower than iOS 8). Oddly, in its support page, Skype states that Windows Phone will no longer be supported after October 2016, so what’ll happen to Windows 10 Mobile users then?
That aside, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for Skype, Gurdeep Pall, did address the fact that Skype has been hit with “unforeseen issues” for some time now. Issues such as messages failing to sync across devices and delayed notifications proved to be a major issue for Skype users. According to company, the transition from using the peer-to-peer architecture to cloud-based servers seem to be one of the causes for the aforementioned issues.
Hopefully Microsoft can sort out its problems with its Skype app, especially given the amount of competition the app is getting. Also, for users that are affected by Skype’s decision to no longer provide continuous support: it’s probably time for an upgrade don’t you think?
(Source: Skype Blog via The Verge)
