Microsoft has announced that it is discontinuing Project Astoria, which was Microsoft’s plan to offer developers an easy way to port Android apps over to Windows 10. Last year, Microsoft had announced that it was planning to build bridge technologies that would allow developers to port iOS and Android apps over to Windows. Project Islandwood was the name given to the iOS bridge, while Project Astoria was the Android Bridge. This announcement comes just a day after Microsoft acquired Xamarin, a startup that allowed developers to write apps in a single programing language, and customise the software to run on Android, iOS, and Android.
In a post on Microsoft’s official blog, the company states, “We received a lot of feedback that having two Bridge technologies to bring code from mobile operating systems to Windows was unnecessary, and the choice between them could be confusing. We have carefully considered this feedback and decided that we would focus our efforts on the Windows Bridge for iOS and make it the single Bridge option for bringing mobile code to all Windows 10 devices, including Xbox and PCs.” The company encourages developers to take a look at the the iOS bridge or Xamarin’s products.
Back in November, it was reported that the project may have been delayed indefinitely. The reason behind this was presumed to be the controversial nature of the project. Since the project was an emulator, developers had little incentive to create apps specifically for Windows. Not only that, but it also made pirating apps easy.