Microsoft executive Joe Belfiore on Sunday explained in a series of Tweets that the company is no longer creating new software or hardware for its Windows Mobile platform.
Belfiore was responding directly to questions posed by fans when he said,
“Many companies still deploy [Windows Phone] to their employees and we will support them! Of course we’ll continue to support the platform … bug fixes, security updates, etc. But building new features/[hardware] aren’t the focus,”
Belfiore admitted that he, like Microsoft founder and former CEO Bill Gates, has switched to Android.
“As an individual end-user, I switched platforms for the app/hw diversity.” The questions put to Belfiore arose due to Microsoft’s recent move to expand its Edge browser to to iOS. The browser is in beta mode via the App Store. Microsoft has focused much of its mobile app efforts on the Android and iOS platforms in recent years with its Office productivity suite, Skype communications tool, Android Launcher, OneDrive, and more. In the end, apps became the problem for Windows 10. “We have tried very hard to incent app [developers]. Paid money … wrote apps for them … but volume of users is too low for most companies to invest,” wrote Belfiore.
With no real selection of apps, Windows Mobile didn’t have much of a chance against the Android and iOS platforms, which each offers more than one billion apps available to end users.
