Microsoft has announced that it will stop supporting Skype on certain older operating systems, including its own, Windows Phone. The company said that the service will no longer be supported on devices running Windows Phone 8 and 8.1 after October 2016. However, Windows Phone isn’t the only OS that will stop receiving support for the service. Devices running Android older than v4.0.3 will no longer be able to run Skype 6.2 or higher, however, they will be able to run Skype 4. Similarly the latest version of Skype will only those devices running iOS 8 or higher. Those who have devices running an older version of the OS are advised to update it as soon as possible so that they can continue to use the latest version of Skype.
According to Microsoft, the reason for this because the company has begun transitioning from a peer-to-peer based architecture to a cloud based one. The company claims that this has allowed it to to introduce new features such as video calling, improved account security to the most recent versions of Skype. However, the company noted that users will still be able to use Skype for Web via the browser