14 DAY TRIAL // After so many top developers that decided to drop support for Windows Phone, here comes Microsoft with similar news but for a completely different purpose.
Redmond will officially discontinue Skype on Windows Phone 8.1 in October as it moves Skype to the cloud, deciding to offer the VoIP solution only on the latest version of mobile and desktop operating systems.
Users of Windows phones will no longer be able to chat with friends on Skype if their devices are powered by Windows Phone 8.0 or 8.1, and the only way to continue running the app is to upgrade to Windows 10 Mobile.
50 percent of WP devices can’t run Windows 10 Mobile
Older versions of Android will no longer be supported either, and Microsoft says that, from now on, Skype will only receive updates on newer versions of Android, iOS 8, Windows XP to 10. Linux and Mac versions will also continue to be supported.
“The transition has been ongoing for a while and isn’t complete quite yet. The team is working hard to ensure that our users can continue to use Skype smoothly throughout the transition,” Microsoft explains.
“At times, unforeseen issues have cropped up, like messages not syncing across devices, or notifications not being delivered reliably. Knowing the impact of these issues for our users, we fix these issues as quickly as we can. We do ask all our users to update Skype to ensure they benefit from our latest fixes and improvements and to enable a smooth transition to the cloud.”
Seeing Microsoft dropping support for Skype on Windows Phone 8.1 is a little bit unexpected, especially because not all devices are eligible for the upgrade to Windows 10 Mobile. Approximately 50 percent of the Windows Phone device lineup cannot run Windows 10 Mobile because of technical limitations, so the company is leaving quite a lot of users behind with this decision.
Microsoft says that the transition to the new cloud-based infrastructure for Skype will be completed in the coming months, and only the latest versions of each operating system will be supported.