Skype turns 10 today, and, according to reports, is in the process of developing 3D video calls.

The news was confirmed by Microsoft’s corporate VP for Skype, Mark Gillett, in an interview with the BBC.

It’s potentially a very exciting development for the VoIP provider; however the prospect of sending ‘body doubles’ to meetings, as teased in a Microsoft job advert back in April, will not become a reality for several years.

“We have it in the lab, we know how to make it work and we’re looking at the ecosystem of devices and their capability to support it in order to make a decision when we might think about bringing something like that to market,” Gillett told the BBC.

Sounds very impressive. Yet, for the top brass at Skype, will this be a happy birthday?

Mark Lewis, VP of communications and networking at Interoute, said that Skype’s first ten years were what “internet startups dream of”.

“Skype led the VoIP revolution becoming the long-distance voice operator of choice for savvy consumers, and then the default non-telephony voice and video communications medium for both consumers and businesses,” he said.

“Skype sits at the heart of tomorrow’s complete communications ecosystem.”

Having been bought by Microsoft for $8.5bn in 2011, Skype sits as one of the jewels in Redmond’s crown. It’s not been the easiest of months for Microsoft – or decades, if you believe everything you read – yet it remains a pivotal part of the company strategy.

Despite the analyst opinion that Microsoft paid over the odds for Skype – outgoing CEO Steve Ballmer was “in a war with himself”, as quoted by the Financial Times – there is plenty of solid integration going on, with the software being meshed in with the Xbox One, as well as being pre-installed on Windows 8.1.

It’s not a walled garden, however; Skype is also looking at integrating with the PlayStation 4, as well as shipping iterations of Skype which run on Sony TVs.

The competition is becoming more intense. Earlier this month, WhatsApp announced it was integrating voice into its messaging service, with a blog post noting that “there’s no substitute for hearing the sound of a friend or family member’s voice”.

TelecomsTech speculated over whether this was worse news for operators or WhatsApp itself. Yet it could spell even worse news for Skype.

With mobile the major battleground, WhatsApp certainly has the advantage over Skype. Let’s face it; the fact you still have to log in on a mobile device isn’t exactly user-friendly. And given Microsoft’s record in mobile, this could be a major flashpoint.

It bears itself out in the company’s revenues, which come almost entirely from calls, although Microsoft doesn’t reveal the exact figures.

Henn Ruukel, formerly of Skype and now at messaging service Fleep, told the FT: “Good video calling was the number one priority. Instant messaging was always seen as a secondary feature.”

So what is Skype? A VoIP provider? An OTT player? A messaging service? An operator, according to ARCEP.

Yes, the French telecoms regulator called Skype out in March for not declaring itself as a telco, in line with Article L. 33-1 of the French Postal and Electronic Communications Code.

Regardless of what regulators affirm, however, Skype’s legacy has been impressive. As TelecomsTech recognised after Skype turned nine this time last year, a report from Telegeography showed that Skype added 47bn minutes of international traffic in 2011, more than twice all the telephone companies in the world combined.

But of course, as many tech companies find, you can’t rest on legacy. The 3D future could be tantalizing. But for many consumers reading this, getting annoyed whenever their Skype call cuts out, they’ll probably want the Luxembourg-based company to get its 2D service right first before moving to 3D.

What do you make of Skype’s first 10 years?