With the coronavirus outbreak forcing many people across the world to stay home, users have been flocking to video calling apps to stay in touch. Enterprise-focused apps such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams are seeing unprecedented usage right now, with the latter reaching 44 million daily active users generating over 900 million meeting and calling minutes every day.
If Microsoft Teams is clearly in the spotlight right now, many of us were wondering about Skype, which used to be a juggernaut in the messaging/video calling space not so long ago. Well, Microsoft confirmed today that Skype is seeing increased usage as well with 40 million daily active users as of this writing, which is almost as high as the 44 million daily users for Microsoft Teams.
Microsoft also said today that Skype usage is up 70% month over month, with a 220 percent increase in Skype to Skype calling minutes in the same period. Even though Skype is not as popular as other consumer messaging apps such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, the app remains ubiquitous and also supports guests users, allowing everyone to join group calls without a Skype account. “To help people get connected even faster, we recently introduced a new feature in Skype called Meet Now. Meet Now lets you easily create video meetings in as little as three clicks for free, no signups or downloads required,” Microsoft highlighted today.
It’s good to see that Microsoft and consumers haven’t forgotten about Skype during these challenging times, though Skype may soon have to compete with the freshly announced Microsoft Teams for Consumers. Later this summer, the Microsoft Teams app will allow friends and families to stay in touch with messaging, video calls, shared to-do lists and calendars, and more. This will all work by adding your personal Microsoft account to the Teams app, and we’re looking forward to trying these features in the coming months.
