BBC News, 6
November 2012
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| Windows Live Messenger replicated much of the functionality of the firm's Skype division |
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.
 |
| Skype is offering a tool to migrate users WLM contacts to its service |
"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.
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