Bye Bye SkypeKit...What's Next

Today users of Invoxia were notified that SkypeKit is no more. While a few months ago rumors were that SkypeKit enabled devices would keep working, I was telling others that I wouldn't count on anything that was hardware related that worked with Skype to expect it to keep working. Invoxia's revelation pretty much shows the continual pattern of Skype cutting off its partners that started with Asterisk a few years ago, and now is impacting others.

BlueJeans Networks who recently announced a major interop with Google Hangouts likely are now going to also be affected to at some point if they haven't been already cut off, as are any of the video interops. This makes client Truphone look very smart in ripping out Skype interoperability a few years back, and other companies who figured out early on that Skype wasn't there for them for the long haul, further underscoring why standards like WebRTC are needed, and interoperability, the way the mobile and telephone networks operate is required.

So if today it's SkypeKit, can we expect Skype In numbers to be the next thing to go?

Here's the letter from Invoxia that was received today:

 

Dear NVX users, We're sorry to announce that Skype won't be supported on invoxia products anymore . Today, Microsoft stopped the ability for Skype accounts to connect on devices using SkypeKit. All support for SkypeKit ended and no further updates to the SkypeKit SDK will be available. As a result, anyone accessing SkypeKit enabled app will now be unable to sign in to Skype or access any Skype-enabled functionality via our app. The NVX 610, NVX 620 and NVX 220 using Skype are affected. This Skype denial of service causes the Voice App to crash and restart indefinitely. We have just released a new firmware update to block Skype features and avoid this issue. To update your firmware, please turn your NVX OFF and ON again (on your NVX 610 and NVX 620 using the ON / OFF button or unplug and plug again the power unit cable on NVX 220). After the reboot, the device will check for an update and will update into 8.14.2 blocking the Skype features. We're deeply sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused. Best regards, The invoxia team.