Microsoft owned Skype has realised that going forward, it will not be supporting Windows Phone and some older Android devices.  In a blogpost, Gurdeep Pall, Corporate Vice President of Skype said that the application is transitioning from peer-to-peer to a more mobile friendly cloud architecture. 

By moving over to a cloud architecture, Skype will be able to improve features like video messaging, file sharing and group video calling.  The Skype team is working on the transition, which is creating issues for users right now – like messages not syncing across devices, and/or delayed notifications. 

“At times, unforeseen issues have cropped up, like messages not syncing across devices, or delayed notifications.  Knowing the impact of these issues for our users, we fix these issues as quickly as we can.  We do ask all our users to update Skype to ensure they benefit from our latest fixes and improvements and to enable a smooth transition to the cloud,” said Pall in the blogpost. 

The transition will not be for all devices, as starting September 2016, Skype will not support Windows 8, Windows 8.1 devices.  Android devices running on OS below Android OS 4.0.3 will also not be supported starting September. 

“Our focus will be on the newly released lighter, faster and more responsive UWP app for Windows 10, Skype for iPhone, iPad and Android as well as a web-based native version of Skype for other supported platforms like previous Windows operating Systems, Mac and Linux,” Pall added.