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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Microsoft has announced it intends to "retire" its instant message chat tool and replace it with Skype's messaging tool.</span>
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">The news comes 18 months after the software giant announced it was paying $8.5bn (£5.3bn) for the communications software developer.</span>
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Microsoft said Windows Live Messenger (WLM) would be turned off by March 2013 worldwide, with the exception of China.</span>
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">It reflects the firm's determination to focus its efforts on Skype.</span>
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">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.</span>
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">In 2009, the firm said [COLOR=#4a7194; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none]it had 330 million active users[/COLOR].</span>
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Chat 'cannibalisation'</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span>
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">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.</span>
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">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.</span>
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">"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.</span>
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">"Skype's top-up services offer the chance to monetise its users and Microsoft is also looking towards opportunities in the living room.</span>
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">"Messenger doesn't seem like an appropriate communications platform for TVs or the firm's Xbox console - but Skype does."</span>
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">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.</span>
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">To ease the changeover, Microsoft is offering a tool to migrate WLM messenger contacts over.</span>
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">The risk is that the move encourages users to switch instead to rival platforms such as WhatsApp Messenger, AIM or Google Talk.</span>
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">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.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span>
Microsoft ditches Windows Live Messenger for Skype
Microsoft is to close down its Windows Live Messenger in 2013 and is urging users to switch over to its Skype chat software.
www.bbc.co.uk
