Microsoft, in the past two months, has started to talk a bit more about its plans for Skype with Windows 10. While the company did first open up about their agenda in January, it wasn"t until June that they began to lay the foundation for the future by removing Skype"s modern app from the store.
Unfortunately, we still don"t know exactly when we will see the Messaging app arrive but Microsoft did quietly update an older blog post to say that the app will arrive later this summer; the season officially ends on September 22nd.
The company updated the blog post where they announced that the modern version of Skype would be retired with the statement below.
Later this summer, we’ll roll out the Preview for Universal Skype experiences built into Messaging, Phone and Video apps on Windows 10. These new, light-weight apps will make tasks like calling and messaging more efficient and easier.
This is the first public timeline the company has given regarding the messaging app and seeing that it is an app, it is not dependent on an OS update for it to be delivered. What"s more interesting is that they say "apps" and not single "app" which means that Messaging, Phone, and Video will each be their own separate entity; Microsoft is breaking apart the Skype experience with these Universal apps.
The update does go on to say that the Skype desktop app will not be going away and that it will still retain the deepest feature set for the platform.
This may also be the first time that the company has talked about the phone and video apps too, which will be new features for the OS once they arrive. Considering how widely Skype is used, these apps will give consumers a new way to interact with the service, especially if you only use messaging and don"t care about calling or video.