Microsoft’s Windows Mobile is officially dead

First launched in October 2010 as Windows Phone 7 and later transforming into Windows 10 Mobile, it seems as though Microsoft’s mobile operating system has finally been laid to rest.

Joe Belfiore, corporate vice-president in the Operating Systems Group at Microsoft and the lead on Windows 10, tweeted they will continue to support the platform with bug fixes and security updates, but that neither new features nor hardware were "the focus" right now.

“We have tried VERY HARD to incent[ivise] app devs,” said Belfiore, explaining that the Windows Mobile division had encouraged app developers by paying them to create apps while populating the Mobile app marketplace with Microsoft-created apps, but that ultimately the volume of users was simply too low for most companies to invest.

Belfiore went on to say that he personally “as an individual end-user”, switched platforms (he didn’t say whether he migrated to iOS or Android) for app and hardware diversity, advising a Windows Mobile user to “choose what’s best” for them when asked whether it was time to leave the platform.