In a series of Tweets answering users questions on Windows Phone, Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore admits that, outside of business customers, the platform is in maintenance mode. It is the closest yet that the company has indicated that they have no further plans for developing a mobile platform.
Of course we’ll continue to support the platform.. bug fixes, security updates, etc. But building new features/hw aren’t the focus. 😟 https://t.co/0CH9TZdIFu
— Joe Belfiore (@joebelfiore) October 8, 2017
Based on Mr. Belfiore’s sad-face emoji, it doesn’t appear he’s all too thrilled with the situation for fans and users of Windows Phone, but the reality is that the phone platform will slowly ride off into the sunset.
The series of Tweets from him were actually quite enlightening on the overall view of the phone platform as well as the efforts that Microsoft made to sustain it and make it grown. This included payments to developers and even wrote apps for them but to no avail. He goes on further to explain that the vast majority of users out there have mixed environments (meaning a mix of Windows, Mac, iOS and Android).
You add Mr. Belfiore’s comments to the re-launch of Microsoft Launcher (formerly Arrow Launcher) and the launch of Edge for iOS and Android, it is clear that Microsoft’s focus is on bringing the “Microsoft experience” to these platforms, not develop their own. This is good, obviously, as it allows users who are heavy into the Microsoft ecosystem to get their phones, regardless of platform, to play nice with them.
Personally, as a multi-year MVP for Microsoft on Windows Phone (last awarded in 2012), I’ll always have a soft spot for the platform but I realized in 2012 it was not going anywhere and moved to Android (with a very brief stop in iOSville.). Essentially, that’s what all users of the platform need to do if they haven’t already.
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