At its Future Decoded event on Wednesday in Mumbai India, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella launched its new and lightest app Skype Lite. The app has been designed in India and is offered exclusively to Indian users.
The popular video calling app has amassed enormous popularity amongst business and individual users. In order to target Indian market aptly, a new app has been designed which features meant for low-end smartphones. “Although, 4G penetration has increased in India, network speeds still drop to 2G and 3G levels often. Skype Lite will be beneficial for users in areas with low data connectivity,” said Eugene Ho, Director, Product Management, Skype.
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It was developed and designed at tech giant’s Hyderabad R&D center. Unlike the existing instant messaging apps, this app will consume low data. Additionally, it is available in eight Indian languages and has support for reading and replying to SMS and tracking mobile data usage. Microsoft has also enabled specialized bots for Indian users, which will track down automate tasks and pull in content, such as news, in a more efficient way than opening a web browser.
Apart from this, the app will also comprise photos and videos shared via conversations in the app, which further helps in lessening data consumption. While the app focuses on low data usage, it’s a mere 13 MB app that occupies limited space on low-end devices.
According to TechCrunch, “The company said it plans to integrate Aadhaar (an Indian identification card), India’s national digital identity scheme, to enable certain services from June. That can “enable Skype users to verify the identity of unknown callers in a variety of situations where identification verification is required, including job interviews, goods and property sale,”
Skype made communication nominal way before any other instant messenger. Although, with the introduction of WhatsApp and other similar messengers, Skype too went free for all. The messenger service is highly used by business entities to communicate worldwide. With Skype Lite, we expect other such personalized apps may get launched for other countries and regions.
Note: This app has been discontinued.