Tencent has announced that it’s going to stop the development of their popular QQ app for Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 10 Mobile operating system (via ZDNet). Despite praising Windows 10 Mobile, the developer said that users are leaving Windows Phone OS to other platforms, and worst of it, the company isn’t showing any effort to make them stick to it.
The company said in an online announcement, “despite that the era of Windows 10 Mobile is coming, we may not follow closely this time. It is not because we are changing, but the reality is cruel, which drives us to change and adapt to the times.”
“Users on the Windows Phone platform keeps declining and have moved to other platforms, but [we] didn’t notice that Microsoft is showing any effort to retain them,” said Tencent. “But we believe that Windows 10 Mobile is a good platform which is yet a hit to the market.”
The company said QQ app will continue to support the existing Windows Mobile platform, but there won’t be any major updates for the app. In fact, the last update for Windows Phone was released on June 12, 2015, so it seems the update to stop the development for Microsoft’s operating system was quite old. On the other hand, the app was updated on Android and iOS earlier this month.
Windows 10 Mobile is yet to make it to major existing devices so the overall user base is quite small — not counting those who are still running the insider previews. Microsoft promised to upgrade existing devices to Windows 10 Mobile, but we haven’t witnessed it for existing devices in key smartphone markets.
Windows 10 Mobile is without a doubt an excellent operating system, but Microsoft has to find a way to attract more users to make a switch from iOS and Android by attracting key smartphone vendors to launch Windows Phone devices as well as by getting rid of the app gap.
