Free Skype group video calling coming to Android, iOS, Windows 10 Mobile
Microsoft is working on bringing free group video calling to Android, iPhone, iPad and Windows 10 Mobile.
On January 12 -- the 10-year anniversary of the launch of Skype video -- Microsoft officials said group video calling would be coming to the above-mentioned platforms "in the coming weeks."
"We'll be rolling out this new feature to our hundreds of millions of mobile users in the coming weeks, but if you want to preview before everyone else, hit the link below, provide us with some details and we'll do the rest," said Skype Corporate Vice President Gurdeep Pall in a new blog post.
In 2014, Microsoft officials said the company would phase out paid Skype group video calling over time. Last August, Microsoft expanded the group of users to whom free voice and video calling was available by including users of Skype for Web and Skype integrated directly into Outlook.com.
Microsoft has been making more of its Skype (and other previously paid) services and apps available for free as part of the company's move toward freemium and/or ad-supported business models.
Now if the Skype team would fix that still-occurring bug that is still causing instant messages in Skype on Windows to appear in the wrong order....
Update: Aha! A fix for the Skype for Windows message-ordering -- plus the unread messages issues -- seems to be rolling out.