There’s a worrying new trend in the Windows Phone world – applications are disappearing.
American Airlines, Chase Bank, Bank of America, NBC, Pinterest, and Kabam have all discontinued their Windows Phone apps in the past year. These huge apps have simply disappeared or will no longer be updated. Some companies have cited a lack of Windows Phone users, and others have remained silent, but each removal has put Microsoft another step behind in the mobile race.
It’s not just third-party apps disappearing, either. Microsoft has removed several MSN apps and its popular Photosynth app, and the software maker has also killed off a number of special Lumia camera apps. Windows Phone users still don’t have great Skype or Office apps like Microsoft produces for the iPhone. It’s stunning that, after five years, the best experience of using Skype or Office on a phone isn’t on one powered by Windows. This will change in Windows 10 Mobile, but it’s not available yet.
Considering Microsoft’s broken promises, abysmal messaging, glacial development pace, endless resets, and confusing strategies, it’s entirely and 100% understandable that developers are giving Windows Phone the boot. I’m sure we’ll get comments about “just you wait until Windows Phone 10!”, but nobody is falling for those empty promises anymore.
Windows Phone could’ve been great, if only it hadn’t been managed by utter incompetency.
I have owned Windows phones for 10 years, currently have a Lumia 925. Microsoft mobile is and has been a frustration that I may never get over. I have had the Windows 10 Mobile build on and off my phone all year. Only the most recent build 10572 has been functional enough for me to keep and stability-wise it has been the best so far.
I would rather have the latest Windows Phone 8.1 build, but AT&T has been pathetically slow about release the updates.
As mentioning in the post, all the bank apps I use have been dropped so, I can’t go solo with a Windows phone, so I own an iPhone which is my daily driver.
I have been using Microsoft products, beginning with MS-DOS in the mid-1980’s. Sadly, I have never been completely satisfied.
just wanted to say i love your name and that you are still analog.
Then why do you keep using Microsoft products? I gave up on Microsoft over a decade ago when Windows activation debuted on Windows XP. I refused to beg Microsoft to use my own computer should I decide to update my motherboard! I’ve been using Linux and open source software ever since on all of my machines and have never looked back nor found any reason whatsoever to use Windows again. I’ve also blissfully never needed to use anti-virus or anti-malware software which is a major plus.
If you work for other companies, then you will be forced to use Windows. If you are into gaming, you are also somehow be forced to use Windows. If I have the resources and start a company, it will be Linux desktop/ LibreOffice combination and a sort of PHP/Python/Pascal; PostgreSQL/MySQL for other customized software needs.
No offense, but as far as gaming goes, you are not forced. A large number of games are available on Linux thanks to Steam. Maybe not ALL, but enough that you can be a pretty enthusiastic gamer without touching windows.
But as far as phones go, I don’t know any situation forcing you to use a Windows phone.
Why has windows clung on to dominance for so long? In no small part because of compatibility. Take the article from earlier today, you can still use the font from windows 3!! If I write an app for windows now, its more than likely that same app will continue to run in a decade.
I appreciate that mobile is fast moving, but so were PCs. If microsoft chose a development method and promised to support that and only that for 10 years, the devs would come back. Mobile,7,8,8.1,10 is to many changes for an indi dev to keep up with for a minnow platform.
The Devs have left Microsoft. The hardware devs have left Microsoft.
No amount of commitment from Microsoft is going to change that on the mobile front. Microsoft is realizing that and moving towards the Cloud as a result. I really wouldn’t be surprised if they dropped the Windows Mobile platform entirely in another year or so with they way they’ve been scaling it back, and moving towards ensuring their apps work on Android and iOS.
I don’t understand this whole “constant rebooting” drama. Apps that you wrote for 8 work on 8.1 and also work on 10. You CAN (with really a minimal investment in time) turn your app into a Universal App and make it run on “Desktop” as well but you don’t have to. Do people complain in the same way that Apple reboots iOS or forces devs to Swift? No, that is called progress/innovation.
The developer tools are free and amazing (Visual Studio Community 2015), the programming languages are the ones that devs have been using for over a decade, the phone emulators are amazing, the dev-license is peanuts and only needed for distribution through the Microsoft Store
Microsoft was late to the party after iOS and Android. Being nr. 3 is a very hard place to be in.
But they are nr. 3 like Linux is nr. 3 but with double the market share and everybody loves Linux right?
Lets treat Windows Mobile fairly.
* Objectively the OS is great and about to get a lot better
* Devices are good value/money
* Development tools are amazing
* Apps need work. Microsoft is putting in that work, so are others. Trying to put Windows Mobile down for no good reason will make the Mobile world a pure Apple/Google world and who would benefit from that?
In what universe? Linux is crushing everything except one very specific market, which is oddly (and I’m sure it’s a total coincidence) always the one that Microsoft fanboys love to talk about as if it’s the most important one.
Its true. Microsoft was very late in responding to the Job’s iPhone. Yes they had been in the mobile business for a while before the iPhone, but so had the entire industry.
Edited 2015-10-23 17:26 UTC
MS was early in the phone scene. its just that they consciously decided they would rather protect their lucrative desktop monopoly and didn’t properly develope mobile. That left the door wide open…funny enough doors were left open that android has the bulk of the market, and I don’t think google necessarily even wanted it.
Microsoft’s own first party app support evolved
from “Windows exclusive”
to “First and Best on Windows”
to “Windows eventually”
to “Maybe on Windows in the future”
No, Microsoft is clearly not putting in any work besides the bare minimum. How can they expect more from mobile developers, who don’t even care to update their browser detection scripts for IE’s new Android-like User Agent string which was introduced with 8.1 GDR2(?). This had the effect to send former users of the WP Mint banking app to the Google Play Store. Which would have been funny if it wasn’t so sad.
If you’re not yet on Microsoft’s payroll, you should most definitively submit your application…
Don’t worry, if you love open source and Linux, Microsoft wants you.
http://www.businessinsider.com/if-you-know-linux-microsoft-wants-yo…
Edited 2015-10-26 06:37 UTC
Full Disclosure, I work as a developer that is mostly Microsoft based so I know all of their tools and products like the back of my hand. I don’t do a lot of app development because we focus on internal projects for companies and for that it is 80% webapplications, 15% legacy applications and only 5% apps (mostly stripped down version of the full webapps).
However I also use lots of other hardware, software, servers and development tools and have been working in IT for > 20 years now following news VERY closely so I have some idea what is going on in the world of software. I use hardware and software that I like, not that I have to use. I just happen to like Windows Phone at lot. So when I see non-news like this posted everywhere while not seeing other news (I even submitted a “let’s not only publish bad news, here is good news” article last month but it never got published here) I try to give some objective info to balance out all the FUD.
Development on Windows Phone went really quickly and new features and improvements kept streaming in until 8.1 Update 1 (Almost 1.5 year ago). After that only 1 update was provided (Denim) that greatly improved the camera speed on my wifes phone (1520) but didn’t do anything for my phone (1020). So from that point of view Windows Phone has been stagnant for a very long time. The last months I have started to use a 1520 with Windows 10 Preview and that has not impressed me a lot until suddenly, last week, there was build 10572 that feels like a RC (while the other builds felt like alphas). I have no idea why all of a sudden there is so much “Windows Phone is dead” news everywhere and especially here on OSAlert.
In my ideal world there would be WM10, Android6 and IOS9 with 30% marketshare for everyone and 10% for new platforms that introduce weird ideas. There isn’t enough diversity in the (user facing) OS-world and we don’t want another monopoly do we?
A Microsoft die hard fan suddenly concerned with monopolistic behavior… of other companies of course. When will wonders cease?
Seriously, you’re wasting your precious time and energy, on this earth, defending the “honor” and astroturfing for a mega corporation for free. But then again, it’s your time and you can do with it as you please.
Edited 2015-10-26 18:39 UTC
Is it so difficult for people to understand that you can think some products are the best tools available while still being critical about the company that makes them? I cannot stand using Explorer in Windows, but can do magic as soon as I install Total Commander. I like the Surface Pro but I think the Surface Books is nothing special and very overpriced. I liked Internet Explorer 6 but hated that they basically stopped development for 5 years and got way behind the competition. I loved Chrome for its synching but hate the way it forces Google-standards down peoples throats. I love working in Visual Studio but hate installing that gigantic bulk of 30 GB in 30 seperate installers. Just like I love the simpleness of my iPad 2 but hate all the things it cannot do.
And for all the bad things that Microsoft did they had to make versions of Windows without IE/WMP/Messenger while every other OS has those things build in and sometimes non replacable?
I really don’t appreciate the term astroturfing. I am in no way paid or motivated by anyone to write what I write. I just love technology and love discussing it. In these discussions I try to use facts, research and experience.
So here is a quick factcheck: I had a quick look today on my Windows Phone. I have roughly 130 apps in my “2 year installation history”. Only 5 of those are no longer available. 2 of them are camera apps that have been replaced by newer camera apps. One is a game that is now actually available under another name and the other one is an image editor that also got replaced by another app. The only app that is really no longer availabe is “Gestures Beta”. By the way, this applist started building up roughly 2 years ago on Windows 8 and I am now talking about running them on the latest Windows 10 Mobile build.
There are also 2 apps that have gotten worse. 1 is for a tvguide where the daily-lists and channel lists still work but the “top 5” lists are now blank. I guess some webservice changed and the developer didn’t care anymore.
The other app is for another tech blog called tweakers. The news still comes in but the comments no longer show up. The only replacements that I have found are webfrontends. I just pinned the website to my homescreen.
Now on the new front I got lots of goodness from Windows 10 mobile, but also many kidsgames, whatsapp, vlc and facebook (and fb messenger) nicely update. But mostly it is Skype Translator that made it possible for me to start having basic conversations with my Japanese family-in-law.
A very simple list of things that I love about Windows Phone:
* The homescreen
* The speed/stability/batterylife
* The camera
* Kids corner
* The (free) offline maps
* The Developer Preview / Windows Insider program that lets you run the latest version by just installing an app (no rooting, no carrier-blocking)
(and I just have to add: The fact that I bought this 1.5 year old 1520 that I still think is amazing to this day for only 125 Euro (unlocked, no contract) and gave it a 128 GB SD-Card update for 50 dollar. Now if that isn’t great value for money… So I gave my mother one as well and she is starting to like it. Couldn’t convince my father to upgrade from his dumbphone though, he is happy when he doesn’t get any message for a week. He steals my mothers phone for a few racegames though)
Edited 2015-10-26 21:07 UTC
Cue violin music.
This is the thing that most windows phone astroturfers don’t seem to want to accept; WP really does not have any clear value proposition over either Android or iOS. Which is why it’s been mainly ignored by the market, regardless of how much money MS has dumped on it. Even when selling devices at a loss, people still don’t want them. How much clearer the signal can it be?
IMO WP not only can’t seem to attract new customers, it also has significant difficult keeping whatever little customer base it has. I know several people, me included, who own or have owned WP devices recently. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. of them has expressed regret for getting locked to a WP device on a 2-yr contract. And it makes sense, because when people purchase something that foists on them a circa 2008 mobile internet experience in 2014/15, they’re not going to be that thrilled with their purchasing decision.
Microsoft missed this boat, big time. It is a 2-horse race now.
Thanks for enlightening us all with your superior, well-sound knowledge. /s That is, had you really known what you were talking about.
Also, you should write for OSAlert – it seems you have the required amount of arrogance…
It is nice to have some support. I wish that guy had stated why he and his friends all regretted using WP because that would have given his post some actual content that could be discussed. I am also wondering who would get a 2 year contract with a Windows Phone, but I am from a country where you buy the phone outright and take a subscription that fits your needs.
Android, iOS and Windows Phone/Mobile all have a couple of really big strengths and weaknesses. If you use only 1 platform you often know how to work around the weaknesses and learn to appreciate the strengths. I normally don’t comment on Android because my experience with it is very limited compared to iOS and WP. A co-worker of mine (working for the same Microsoft oriented company) is now using a OnePlusOne after using a Lumia 1020 after using an iPhone (5?). He is the first person that has pre-ordered a Lumia 950XL. he dropped his iPhone because he didn’t like being limited by Apple. He dropped his 1020 because he wanted a faster phone with a bigger screen. He is going for the 950XL because he likes the way WP works more than Android and saw this demo of the camera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=23&v=1pPMYFOy3No (especially the low light demo at 6 minutes)
Another co-worker of mine is the first user I personally know of a BlackBerry Passport that I had only seen in the wild for the first time last weekend (maybe there is a sale?). He loves the rectangular screen and keyboard but actually types slower than I do on Windows Phone. There are also plenty of iPhone users here and especially the ones that are really in that ecosystem are very happy with it.
And then there are some users that are still using the Lumia 1020 that we got 2 years ago or that have upgraded those to bigger/faster devices like the 830/930. They envy the fingerprint scanner on the iPhone and cringe when they see all the in-the-app/out-the-app that iOS users have to do.
Us Android/WP users tap-2-share, iOS users tell us that we should have used iMessage but that they will share the file on dropbox/onedrive. I miss the slowmotion capture on WP, they miss the zoomlevel of the 1020/1520.
Living in a mixed environment makes you aware of all the things that are going on and I really wouldn’t want just Android/iOS.
Because there are no compelling cost effective alternatives to Windows.
Are you serious? You know this is 2015, right?
I am serious. What’s the alternative? Linux? ChromeOS? Neither of these have the breadth of applications most companies require.
( I am not including Apple here because it’s not really cost effective, at least outside of the US and Canada. )
We allow our employees any OS they want. About 70% chose Apple, 30% choose Windows. We’ve had one developer choose Linux but she switched after a month because we couldn’t get any cross OS screen sharing apps working reliably on her machine.
We have around 30% on Linux and I use it usually also myself. All operating systems seem to have different kind of problems, but I’d say Windows is the one that makes my head explode almost immediately.
Edited 2015-10-25 18:07 UTC
We are a very small company, we use some Linux desktops, 100% Linux on servers under vsphere. I am starting to use NOMACHINE for remote administration.
4 major versions in 5 years is too fast? Really? iOS has had 6. Android has had 5. Many of them requiring essentially full rewrites if you wanted to ensure good user experience.
Which is the key point of contention… Apple and Android devs are on board (for the most part) with maintaining good user experience. They know they will have to adapt rapidly, they know things will change, they know the rug will get pulled out from under them every few years. It is part of the process. Its “get on board or get out of the damn way”, and for the most part if you can’t buy into that you are just dead weight. They will rewrite/update their apps on new OS versions because it makes their apps better – not because their apps necessarily break…
Microsoft devs want to move to mobile and have it work like Windows does. Write an app and have it still work in 10 years… They want to work on it in cycles, leaving it stagnant for months or even years. They want compatibility shims or virtual machines or whatever it takes to avoid having to actually maintain their software beyond just fixing bugs. They just don’t get it…
Mobile simply doesn’t work that way. The hardware is changing constantly. Apple adds touch id, every single app that authenticates users pretty much requires a full rework because in order to ensure a good user experience you have to support it. If you don’t your competition will, and they will murder you… New things like this get thrown at you pretty much annually. If you can’t deal with them you really shouldn’t be writing anything beyond toy apps – you are a drag on the platform… Sometimes if the feature is important enough, they will intentionally break your app until you implement it. Stale = death.
Im not saying all MS developers are dead weight, some of them are professionals and adapt, but the whole “make it easy for me” attitude and kicking and screaming over every single change is a huge part of Microsoft’s problem when it comes to platform traction in mobile.
No… In my opinion Microsoft has no interest in getting “their developers back”. They are after everyone else’s developers – because they are grown ups who already get it…
I don’t know if it will work, but that is what they are going for. That is why they are pushing so hard with their own apps on Android and iOS – they want to slowly win over devs by demonstrating they finally “get it” – user experience matters and the OS is more than just a compatibility layer for running business apps. It has to evolve – rapidly.
“It works” is not good enough…
Edited 2015-10-23 22:03 UTC
You have a very strange definition of what it means to rewrite an application. The app I’ve been maintaining for iOS since iOS 4 has been rewritten exactly 0 times. And no, adding support for a new feature is not a rewrite! If it were, I’ve been “rewriting” applications since Windows 95 as even those old versions you were referring to added new features all the time.
A rewrite is when the change in requirements are so large that you have to start over. Like when Microsoft told all MFC developers they had to switch to WinForms (and as a result was ignored by the largest desktop software houses like Adobe, Autodesk and their own Office team). Or when they then two years later told all WinForms developers they had to switch to WPF/XAML (and this time was ignored by the Visual Studio team for 5 years).
The last time Apple did anything as drastic as this was when they introduced OS X. But even then they at least created Carbon to minimize the pain in the transition period. Microsoft, on the other hand, did exactly the opposite with Windows 8 and Windows Phone 7. They blocked even the parts they could easily have supported – things like LoadLibrary+GetProcAddress or HWNDs (because, lets not fool ourselves, just below the skin of WinRT it all maps to HWNDs anyway).
Microsoft offered devs a shitty deal and as result they didn’t take the offer! Where do you think all those Android, iOS and OS X devs came from? Yes, that’s right! They used to be Windows developers. And you’re saying Microsoft doesn’t want them back? Of course they do.
Dude. You are completely off your rocker. The huge, vast, gigantic majority of mobile developers have never written a line of code for Microsoft systems… Most of them came from OSX, or Linux, or Java, or damn near everywhere else but Windows. Your clueless.
Microsoft didn’t lose developers to other platforms, they lost developers to attrition, to their own previous platforms. The guys writing apps for VB 6 kept on doing it for years. The ones writing apps for Windows XP kept on doing that for years. The MFC guys are still writing MFC apps.
Sure, they got quite a lot of buy-in with .NET, and I don’t really think they lost many of those guys, but they all complain about WinForms being replaced with WPF, then it is Silverlight being deprecated, etc. etc. Its all the same damn thing, Why all the complaining?
Not many of these guys jump the fence – because the other side of the fence is worse of you are used to being coddled…
Edited 2015-10-24 02:03 UTC
I can only assume you don’t work in a commercial development environment. Stability and longevity of technologies are key. Most/all applications don’t have the budget to keep rewriting in the latest, most trendy language. In my last role, we had a barracuda based system and one in grails. Trust me, if someone had thought of the longevity and compatibility, these would NOT have been the technologies chosen. This is no different for mobile applications that we write. We want to build an app and (bar some bug fixing) leave it be. 100k investment every two years to do it over again would mean we’d never get a return on investment, and likely be working to a loss.
Things Apple used to have:
– Quickdraw
– Quickdraw 3D
– Quicktime Java API
– Java/Objective-C Bridge
– Java desktop integration
– Carbon
– AppleTalk
– PowerPC Processors
– Remains to be seen how long OpenGL might be kept alive
– …
I like Windows Phone. I like the UI, I like the way it’s organized. I like using it. Unfortunately, I seem to be in the huge minority.
I’m hopeful that Windows 10 will start a resurgence but I’m far from confident.
For now, I’ll just keep soldiering on. I’ve considered defecting a couple of times, but when I look at iOS or Android, it feels like taking a step backward in order to get apps and, right now, there’s no killer app to force my hand.
The second this article hit The Verge I knew you would put it up here and link back to your own article. I was only surprised how quickly you did it and that you didn’t combine it with the “everything at Microsoft is up but Phone is down”.
It is simply a false statement that apps are only being cancelled. I keep discovering new apps, apps keep getting updated and some major parties just started to make apps for Windows Phone/Mobile. The situation is far from ideal and some apps are missing and many apps are lower quality. But many apps are also great and unique and I am personally not missing any app. We all know that the USA doesn’t care for Windows Phone and that is also where you see bank-apps disappearing. But my Dutch bank has a great app that has been improved several times. I can play youtube videos and cast them to my ChromeCast, I can use each and every emailprovider, play more games than I can think of, browse the web, print pdf’s on my WiFi printer, tap-2-share files with Android phones and basically enjoy my phone for everything that everyone else does.
That said, I am going to be the one that says “Windows 10 is going to make things better”. I tried a few preview versions and they were disappointing, slow, buggy, incomplete. then 10572 came a few days ago and …. WOW. Just like I thought July would be too early for Windows 10, I though November/December would be too early for Windows 10 Mobile. 10572 Has changed my mind. They are going to make it on time AND work well. It will not be perfect (just like every other OS) and they will need to keep updating it like they are doing with Windows 10 but so far I am enjoying Windows on my phone even more than before.
I am always a bit confused when I read these statements of yours. Sometimes you happen to state that you praise the platform and understand its peculiarities, but more often you end up slinging mud on it, saying that it’s going nowhere, potentially producing the exact opposite impression on your readers.
If you really care about a third competitor in the mobile space – including all the positive effects of such an implication – perhaps you might start by doing your own little by discussing about it more constructively (there’s a balanced way of dealing with this stuff, right between mudslinging and brownnosing). Not to mention that you are implicitly treating all WP users like “idiots who chose the wrong product”.
It is possible to really like something and, at the same time, to accept that it may go nowhere despite the fact that you like it due to factors beyond your control. I, for example, quite like ChromeOS in concept, and the way it effectively could meld the web and the local application into such a seamless experience… yet I don’t think it’s going anywhere either, because Google simply doesn’t care about it as anything more than a toy. Being realistic about a situation doesn’t mean you’re happy about it, and I’m not one for being blithe and cheerful when all indications are to the contrary. All things considered, I think Thom is being quite balanced in his criticisms.
All things considered, on the contrary I feel that the way he expresses his points of view (not only on this subject, but generally on all those he doesn’t particularly like as of lately) is very emotion-driven, and thus not very objective but sometimes even rather cocky – it’s this that often spurs equally-angered reactions from readers. That’s why I believe this kind of tone would be more appropriate for a personal blog, and not really suitable here…
I’m not sure why people are ripping into Windows Mobile at this late stage. Everyone knows the situation, even Satya Nadella discussed this at length, in public.
The app situation is mixed, about 10% of Spotify paying users are on Windows mobile which is way more than would be expected, also Audible brought their windows development in-house and have produced a Stella universal app.
Conclusion: strong companies with good products will continue to make apps, the weaker ones will come and go.
ps. American airline has a 1 star rating http://www.consumeraffairs.com/travel/american_airlines.htm
American is currently my airline of choice, mainly because it has nonstop flights to certain destinations that I travel frequently that no other carriers match. Can’t says its significantly worse than other airlines, and is better in some regards. Northwest was always in a class by itself at the bottom of the list; I wonder how Delta is doing these days.
I knew OS/2 was dead when the new IBM Aptivas came out all running Windows. When Microsoft puts their best mobile development into apps for iOS and Android, the writing is on the Gorilla Glass 3 wall.
(full re-edit)
sorry.
that’s what I get for thinking I’ve got the gist of the story and commenting BEFORE reading rest of original article. doh!
(i misread and thought they were removing applications from people phones rather than only the app store)
Still less than perfect
Edited 2015-10-23 17:41 UTC
It’s worth noting that the post comes from Tom Warren, who is generally in friendly terms with MS & well connected.
Articles like this are useful references when pointing out to your managers that “it’s ok to drop the WP app, really”.
The same Tom Warren that – while being “the microsoft reporter” at The Verge – was six months late to W8.1 because he would rather wait for Apple to fix their shity boot-camp drivers than buy a proper PC?