As recently as Windows Weekly on the 16th with Chris Capossela, the question was posed about getting rid of Skype in favor of Teams. While this seems like the kind of thing a big tech company would do, does it really make practical sense?
Would it confuse consumers looking for a personal messaging/calling app to look for an app called Teams? It makes sense to me for Skype to be dedicated to individual conversations with anyone on the Skype platform, while Teams is for longer term groups.
Microsoft should align the Skype client and Teams client to be so similar that maintaining two apps is non-material. Personally it would make more sense for Microsoft to use Skype as a brand to compete more with Discord (consumer and freemium) and use Teams to compete with Slack/Zoom (business and organizations) but the two clients are the same tech but different branding.
dftf
<p>It would make sense to use the same codebase, but simply disable certain features in the "home" version, but retain the Skype name. "Skype" is so common now it's used as a verb: "to Skype someone", similar to "Google something". I don't-think "I'll Team you" would ever take-off the same-way. (Though remember, originally for businesses, the client was called "Lync").</p><p><br></p><p>It would be good to do-away with the era of apps with similar names but built from different codebases: "Outlook Express" and "Outlook" aren't the same; "MSN Messenger" (later "Windows Live Messenger") and "Windows Messenger" (that came built-into Windows XP) weren't the same code; "Microsoft Works" wasn't just a feature-reduced version of Microsoft Office but largely it's own thing; "FrontPage Express" and "FrontPage" I think did share some code, but the Express version was still not just the full-version with some features removed; "Windows Movie Maker" and "Windows Live Movie Maker" didn't have the same feature-sets; "Windows Defender" was originally just anti-malware in Vista and 7, with "Microsoft Security Essentials" being an optional install that also searched for viruses; in Windows 8, "Microsoft Security Essentials" came built-in, but oddly was renamed "Windows Defender" (in Windows 10 it's currently "Windows Security" but earlier-on was "Windows Defender Security Centre"!); if you use modern sign-in methods in Windows 10, such as fingerprint or face-recognition, these are referred to as "Windows Passport", not to be confused with ".NET Passport" from the late 90s and early 2000s.</p><p><br></p><p>Let's just have one app, and the "free", "lite" or "home" version simply drop features that would not be required.</p>
jumpingjackflash5
<p>Teams for business/schools, Skype for personal use. Skype can then be lighter client. That is OK. And make gateways between Teams and Skype for users that want to use Skype client for casual connecting (chat/voice/video) to Teams. </p>