Microsoft ditches Windows Live Messenger for Skype
November 7, 2012 01:59 pm
Microsoft has announced it intends to “retire” its instant
message chat tool and replace it with Skype’s messaging tool.
The news comes 18 months after the software giant announced
it was paying $8.5bn (£5.3bn) for the communications software developer.
Microsoft said Windows Live Messenger (WLM) would be turned
off by March 2013 worldwide, with the exception of China.
It reflects the firm’s determination to focus its efforts on
Skype.
WLM launched in 1999 when it was known as MSN Messenger.
Over time, photo delivery, video calls and games were added to the package’s
text-based messages.
In 2009, the firm said it had 330 million active users.
Chat ‘cannibalisation’
According to internet analysis firm Comscore, WLM still had
more than double the number of Skype’s instant messenger facility at the start
of this year and was second only in popularity to Yahoo Messenger.
But the report suggested WLM’s US audience had fallen to 8.3
million unique users, representing a 48% drop year-on-year. By contrast, the
number of people using Skype to instant message each other grew over the
period.
“When a company has competing products that can result in
cannibalisation it’s often better to focus on a single one,” said Brian Blau
from the consultancy Gartner.
“Skype’s top-up services offer the chance to monetise its
users and Microsoft is also looking towards opportunities in the living room.
“Messenger doesn’t seem like an appropriate communications
platform for TVs or the firm’s Xbox console - but Skype does.”
He also noted that the firm had opted to integrate Skype
into its new Windows Phone 8 smartphone software, eclipsing the effort to
integrate WLM into the message threads of the operating system’ previous
version.
To ease the changeover, Microsoft is offering a tool to
migrate WLM messenger contacts over.
The risk is that the move encourages users to switch instead
to rival platforms such as WhatsApp Messenger, AIM or Google Talk.
But Microsoft is at least partially protected by its tie-up
with Facebook last year. Skype video calls are now offered as an extra to the
social network’s own instant messaging tool. (BBC News)
