Skype Cuts Future Support For Windows Phone 7

Microsoft is letting the world of Windows Phone 7 (not to be confused with Windows Phone 8) know today that it's time to move on. With Windows Phone 8 being released to smartphones for just under a year, Microsoft has decided that it was time to stop development on their top video chat app Skype. On the plus side, Windows Phone 7 users will continue to work with "the core Skype experiences", those including chat, voice, and video calls.

So you can still use Skype for chat, voice, and video calls – isn't that everything? For now, yes – that is essentially everything. What Microsoft has made clear today is not that Skype will be shut down for Windows Phone 7 devices, but that they'll not be investing any more time into making Skype better for the platform.

In other words: what you have now is as much as you'll get.

Meanwhile Skype will continue to be updated for Windows Phone 8. As Skype's Lara Kingwell suggests, the "vast majority" of their userbase for Windows Phone is, indeed, on Windows Phone 8. The Windows Phone 8 iteration of the Skype app works with updates such as Video Messaging here at the tail end of support for Windows Phone 7 – this and other features in the future will not be added to the legacy version of the app.

Users who do continue to work with Windows Phone 7 and Skype – the few of you out there that Skype says exist – are pointed toward the Skype for Windows Phone community where friendly members of the public will (hopefully) be ready and willing to assist you. At the moment it appears that Skype will continue to be developed for Windows 8 and Windows RT as well.