When you ask people “What’s Skype?”, pretty often the answer you’ll get is “it’s a free video calling app for PC or Mac.” But, the world has changed. People’s computers are just as much in their pockets as on their desks nowadays. Skype has grown up right along with this increasingly mobile world.
Here’s a few things you may not know about the video calling:
- At certain points in the day, there are more people using Skype from their phone or tablet than from a PC.
- Each month, the growth rate of new users coming to Skype on a tablet or phone is double what it was the year before.
- Skype continues to be an essential app, ranked in the top 10 most downloaded apps of all time on Windows Phone, iOS, and Android.
While Skype is known best for calling, users also send tens of billions of chat messages every month to the people they care about most. Now they can use Skype on multiple devices, and the experience is faster and more familiar. More and more users have Skype on their phone, tablet, and PC. This is mostly because people now can benefit from fast, beautiful, and more coherent design across all the devices they use.
However, some improvements are on the way, insiders say. The service will become easier and faster to use and you can expect to see enhancements in the following areas:
- Increasing performance and quality. According to the company, there are some significant changes under the hood to the way in which apps work, specifically around reliability, battery life and performance. This improvements debuted first on Skype for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. Calls and messages come in quickly, reliably and without affecting the battery life. These same enhancements will soon be implemented to all the devices people use Skype on.
- Modern design, putting conversations first. To make interactions on Skype easier, conversations are set to become the heart of a redesigned experience. Not only is the new modern design bold and beautiful, but it’s also simpler and easier to use. Redesigning the service for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 already dramatically reduced the time it takes to reply to a message, while making it even simpler to upgrade that conversation to a voice or video call.
- Completing the experience across devices. The new capabilities of Skype include video messaging, picture sharing, HD video, and more. So, everyone can have the same great Skype experience regardless of the device they choose.
And Microsoft promises that there are more great things to come! Users will increasingly see a more consistent feature set across all apps by the end of the year.
Apps will receive a face-lift to the way they look and significantly improved performance.
One common vision of what Skype’s mobile future should be with more good stuff is in the making.
For those of you who haven’t joined yet, it is about time to consider!
