[goofballlogic]

There's still an opportunity for Microsoft to fix this. They definitely have major problems with basic functional requirements at the moment (like reliably displaying messages that another person has sent to you in chat), but there's not really another offering out there with the brand associations that the Skype name comes with.

All they need to do to bring people back is simplify and focus on robustness of the key functions. However, I'm not sure there's much of a business model they could exploit in this way. Using Skype is free. I've used in for about 10 years and in that time I've maybe spent £40 on paid calling. That's not enough to sustain a high quality offering. It only works if consumer market is the entire focus, leveraging the strategies that the like of Facebook employ.

For these reasons, although it wouldn't be hard to fix, I reckon it won't happen. But who knows, Microsoft have done some things in the open source arena over the last five years. Maybe one day they'll run a product like Skype simply for the satisfaction of owning the world's best online calling service (and the money would surely follow).

[makecheck]

They can’t repair an app that people just delete and refuse to download “updates” for (as I did after about the 4th downgrade-billed-as-update graced my phone).