Support for Windows Phone 8.1 ended two and a half years ago on July 11, 2017. Although the system no longer receives updates and improvements, users can continue to use their devices as long as they are satisfied with them and as long as the necessary applications are running. In terms of apps, Microsoft has an important message for a handful of recent Windows Phone 8.1 users.
Microsoft updated the official documentation for Windows Phone 8.1, in which the company noted that the Windows Phone 8.1 app store will end on December 16, 2019. Applications already installed will continue to work without problems, but users will have to consider the following restrictions:
- After December 16, 2019, users will not be able to download apps from the store or update installed programs. This means that you need to download all the necessary programs by December 16 and do not remove them from your device, since you will no longer be able to officially download free and purchased paid applications.
- Since updates are no longer rolling out to Windows Phone 8.1 apps, apps may lose certain features or stop working altogether. For more information, users can contact the developers of individual applications.
- Re-installing applications will not be possible after December 16, 2019. If the user deletes the application from the smartphone, he cannot restore the program back. This also includes smartphone reset and recovery using Windows Device Recovery Tool. Users should consider this point before resetting a device after December 16, 2019.
The change also affects the upgrade process to Windows 10 Mobile. Certain Lumia smartphones can still upgrade to Windows 10 Mobile using the appropriate app from the store. If you own one of the below mentioned smartphones, please download the Upgrade Advisor app before December 16, 2019, otherwise you will lose the ability to upgrade from Windows Phone 8.1 to Windows 10 Mobile over the air. In this case, the only way to update is to use the utility for updating over the wire.
The following devices are supported: Microsoft Lumia 430, Microsoft Lumia 435, Microsoft Lumia 532, Microsoft Lumia 535, Microsoft Lumia 540, Nokia Lumia 635 1 GB, Nokia Lumia 636, Nokia Lumia 638, Microsoft Lumia 640, Microsoft Lumia 640 XL, Nokia Lumia 730 , Nokia Lumia 735, Nokia Lumia 830, Nokia Lumia 929, Nokia Lumia Icon, Nokia Lumia 930, Nokia Lumia 1520.
If you upgrade your device to Windows 10 Mobile, the store will continue to work. You will be able to download all applications (including those developed for Windows Phone 8.1), update them and fully use your device. At the same time, you should remember that support for Windows 10 Mobile ends in December, which means that you will not receive any more system updates, and the phone's functions will gradually fall off.
Introduced a number of new products under the name "Surface", according to the portal The verge ... The new family includes tablets, laptops, wireless headphones and even a double-folding smartphone.
But one of the biggest surprises at the event was a quote from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella:
"The operating system is no longer the most important product for us."
Nadella said his company will now focus on services and applications, relegating Windows to a secondary or even third place. Considering that Windows is an iconic product for Microsoft, this decision, while rather daring, raises a number of questions.
The head of Microsoft is not saying that Windows is no longer part of the company's business, but hints that the most popular desktop operating system no longer fits into its future. Microsoft's focus is now on Microsoft Graph, a dedicated developer platform that brings together multiple devices and services, including Windows, Office 365, and Azure, for example.
“Right now, the most important thing for us is the application model and the user experience. How people build apps for Duo and Neo [new Surface products] will matter much more than just writing a Windows app or Android app, because it will have to do with the Microsoft Graph, "Satya Nadella said in a sequel. of his speech.
Moreover, it seems that Microsoft had to abandon Windows in favor of Android, created by its competitor. This is also supported by the fact that the previously presented Surface Duo smartphone runs on Android. At the same time, the head of the company's production department does not hide that the choice in favor of Android was obvious - after all, a huge number of applications run on this OS.
Given Microsoft's failed experience with the Windows Phone operating system, the company certainly doesn't need another smartphone without apps.
Now she will have a whole Play Store at her disposal. Microsoft also hinted that it will cooperate with Google in the field of program interfaces.
At the same time, Panay denies that Windows is losing its relevance - according to him, Android is more convenient for smartphones, that's all. However, if you look into the future, you cannot help but notice that more and more computer operations are gradually going into mobile devices, and the CEO of Microsoft understands this.
Despite the fact that Windows is still considered the number one for the desktop, cross-platform technology is coming into technological fashion, which implies a focus on web technology, rather than on the features of the "native" operating system. Microsoft is trying to follow this trend - this is confirmed by the new Android phone, and, for example, Office, available for devices on the iOS platform.
“Microsoft recently unveiled new devices, including phones, tablets, tablets and laptops. However, this is not the main focus of the company, as is the Windows operating system, which has earned billions of dollars for the company, - tells Gazeta.Ru the director of the analytical department at Freedom Finance. “Devices account for less than 5% of revenue, and Windows, which accounted for 30% of revenue in 2010, is now only 16%. The company has noticed this and is ready to develop new directions - services and cloud business. "
According to Merkulov, a development environment is currently underway that will help unify and integrate different operating systems, which leads to a decline in the importance of Windows. The company will continue to focus on OS integration and develop a cloud-based business that could open up new horizons for business.
“It is difficult to judge further how the company will be able to develop this, but the trend of leaving the cloud will prevail in the next five years ... Compared to, the companies are somewhat similar, only Microsoft's business is more focused on the business sphere and Apple on consumers and freelance designers, ”the expert concluded.
It turns out that at the moment there is no need to worry about the near future for Windows, but it is obvious that Microsoft will concentrate all efforts on ensuring that its applications and services work on all platforms, regardless of the operating system. The time of death of Windows will not be announced soon, but this OS is gradually losing its leading position in the list of company priorities.
MOSCOW, July 29 - RIA Novosti, Natalia Dembinskaya.In mid-July, loud news came from Microsoft: the company officially ended support for the Windows Phone mobile operating system, which still powers millions of devices. The corporation had to admit that smartphones do not bring it any profit. In recent years, the market share of Windows Phone has been steadily declining, and now it has almost hit the bottom - 0.1%. Why there was no place at all for the operating system on the market, what the defectors to Android blame for Windows Phone and whether Microsoft will be able to take revenge on Google and Apple - in the RIA Novosti article.
Not a bad start
Immediately after its introduction in 2009, Windows Phone managed to take a solid market share - almost 10%. Then the mobile market was dominated by Symbian, on which the first Nokia smartphones operated - it occupied more than 50% of the market, the second largest player was the mobile OS RIM of the then popular manufacturer Blackberry - the famous phones with a full-fledged qwerty keyboard (20.9%). Android was then only trying to find its place in the sun, occupying only about 4%.
A money-losing startup Android Inc., which developed an operating system for wearable devices, was bought by Google back in 2005, just in case, and only remembered it in 2007, when Steve Jobs introduced the first Apple iPhone.
Google quickly realized that the smartphone market is almost empty, and expensive Apple devices will not be able to fill it entirely.
The rapid rise of Android
At the end of 2009, confusion began on the smartphone market. Nokia had already slowed down the development of Symbian by that time and relied on Windows Mobile. And Google, in turn, has agreed with the Taiwanese manufacturer HTC. The first Android device was the HTC Dream smartphone, which was a resounding success.
iOS and Android began to develop rapidly, but Apple's position, which prohibited third-party companies from using iOS, played not in its favor. In 2011, with the release of Ice Cream Sandwich, Android was already called "the most advanced operating system", smartphone manufacturers Samsung, Alcatel, Philips, LG began to massively migrate to a new promising platform. As a result, Android has consumed almost 50% of the market, displacing all the old-timers from it in one fell swoop. Analysts began to count the rapidly decreasing share of Symbian and RIM in the "other operating systems" category.
On the battlefield, Android, Apple and Windows Phone are virtually three. The latter confidently kept afloat - largely thanks to the release of the popular Nokia Lumia smartphones, which gave a second life to the Finnish phone manufacturer itself.
LG also produced Windows Phone devices.
Nokia got mad at Microsoft
However, the Finns soon began to show discontent. In 2013, Nokia VP Brian Biniak blamed Microsoft for the lack of competitive applications for the Windows Phone platform. It is for this reason that Nokia Lumia sales have declined, he assured.
The annoyance eventually resulted in the switch to Android. So far, the latest version of the Windows Mobile 10 platform (its support, as observers believe, will be discontinued soon, and finally Windows smartphones will die by 2021) "sit" some models of HP and Acer.
In 2015, the new head of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, officially acknowledged the failure of Windows Phone.
“The smartphone boom showed that Windows Phone was far behind Android and iOS, and we missed that train,” Nadella said.
Closed file system
What exactly led to the fact that manufacturers and application developers began to abandon Windows Phone and opt for Android?
Ballmer believes Nokia acquisition will accelerate Windows Phone growthTalking about the recently announced deal to buy Nokia's smartphone business, Ballmer said it will "accelerate the growth of Windows Phone and strengthen the overall device ecosystem."Experts believe that the main disadvantage is the underlying closed file system, which causes compatibility problems for applications and prevents them from working properly. Unlike Android, Windows Phone and Windows Mobile have limited options for customizing applications. The smartphone does not have Google services, it is inconvenient to work with the settings of contacts there. And finally, there are several times fewer applications for this platform compared to Android.
"Success is a terrible teacher," Microsoft founder Bill Gates once said. The corporation itself - a long-term leader in the market of operating systems for PCs - came to the same rake. As it turned out, Microsoft was not ready for the onset of the post-computer era.
"Google and Apple moved forward with modern operating systems, and Microsoft continued to view mobile devices as a third-party, by-product," observers say.
Lack of change and sluggishness
Experts point to no changes since the introduction of Windows Mobile 6.1. iOS and Android have updated design and functionality every year. In Windows Phone, this was out of the question - the system remained monolithic and static.
"What kind of personalization? It is the age-old strict office style, the Explorer web browser and the permanent cut-and-paste function," technology portal Quora notes ironically.
Application developers quickly realized that their products for fast-growing platforms looked much more attractive than on Windows. Now there are only about 165 thousand applications in the Windows Phone Store catalog. For comparison: there are about 900 thousand of them in the AppStore, and almost a million on Google Play.
With Windows Phone 7.5, Microsoft tried to catch up, but it was too late. As a result, with Windows Phone 8, Microsoft found itself in a span: not even the solid hardware stuffing of Nokia helped, observers say.
What's next
The "funeral" of Windows Phone is planned by IDC analysts for 2021 - by that time it will completely disappear from the market, including the latest version of Windows Mobile 10. In the meantime, Microsoft does not intend to say goodbye to it and releases Microsoft Lumia phones based on it (in 2014 it bought Nokia's mobile device business for 5.44 billion euros).
However, in the near future Microsoft is going to "kill" Lumia and release its new Surface Phone with the same tiled interface. In April of this year, the company assured: it will revise its strategy and return to the mobile market with a new vision and new ideas. The market, however, does not doubt that Microsoft will not be able to step into the same river twice.
As you know, until recently, full-fledged smartphones entered the market not only on Android and iOS, as it happens now, but also on those based on BlackBerry OS and Windows Phone. Nevertheless, not a single trace has remained of the former greatness of these platforms, because now they are only a part of history, and any mobile devices based on them are no longer produced. More than two years have passed since Microsoft ended support for WP, and has not released a single update for WP. Everything indicates that smartphones based on this have absolutely no future, and today, October 16, 2019, everyone managed to make sure of this for themselves.
So, in particular, the American corporation Microsoft has publicly announced that already from December 16, 2019, its branded application store called Windows Phone Store will stop working in any way. Installing any applications through it is the only possible way to install software on mobile devices running WP. In practice, this means that users of outdated mobile devices will lose the ability to install any programs and games. The Playmarket will become unavailable on Windows Phone 8.1 at the end of this year, and then, after a period of time, it will also stop working on Windows 10 Mobile.
In this regard, Microsoft recommends all users to think about replacing a mobile device with a new one running Android or iOS. These are products marketed under the Nokia and Microsoft brands. With the end of support for the branded software store, literally everything will stop working, because without it, any smartphones will lose their full functionality, having lost the ability to launch and use third-party software. Support for Windows 10 Mobile in terms of updates will be carried out until December 10, and the branded software store for it will work for some more time.
Lumia 430, Lumia 435, Lumia 532, Lumia 535, Lumia 540, Lumia 635, Lumia 636, Lumia 639, Lumia 640, Lumia 640 XL, Lumia 730, Lumia 735, Lumia 830, Lumia 929, Lumia Icon, Lumia 930 and Lumia 1520. All the owners of these, no doubt, are definitely out of luck, because you hardly need a modern smartphone without the ability to install on it any programs and games from third-party developers. However, users of the WP platform are no strangers to restrictions, because many applications have always been unavailable for it, including such popular and well-known ones as Google Chrome, Gmail, YouTube, and many others.
Renowned Windows blogger Paul Turot tries to comprehend the latest news on WP - and comes to disappointing conclusions.
Paul Turot - Tech Expert and Microsoft Blogger
In July last year, Paul writes, Microsoft practically left the smartphone market. Now the company ... left him a little more.
- Microsoft is de facto leaving the consumer smartphone market. The company has acknowledged its failure in this direction and will now focus on corporate clients. The irony is that when Microsoft launched Windows Phone in 2010, it completely ignored the business direction.
- Almost all Nokia employees who joined Microsoft in 2014 will leave the company by the end of this year. In 2016, only 1,850 Finnish employees will leave the company. Not so many - but most of the employees have already been laid off in the course of the previous two waves of "personnel optimization".
- Microsoft lost more than $ 7.5 billion on the Nokia acquisition. The real amount of losses exceeds $ 10 billion.
Any of these three facts are enough to make a very serious impact on Windows Phone as a platform. Now, Paul writes, in contrast to the situation last year, there is simply nothing to analyze - everything is clear without further ado. The blogger believes that the past year, rich in unpleasant truth about the platform, has made the majority of WP fans realists. Yes, there are still some very hard-nosed users who are waiting for the future revival of the system. But most Windows Phone fans seem to understand exactly what the truth is.
And the truth looks like this:
- Windows Phone is irrelevant as a platform. Now Windows smartphones occupy less than 1 percent of the global smart phone market, and there are not many applications and games needed by a modern user for them.
- Microsoft will continue to develop Windows 10 Mobile. Not to be confused with "Lumia" - Microsoft will only develop and improve the Windows 10 Mobile operating system. Why? Because this is just a SKU (product version) of Windows 10, and because it runs on ARM hardware that runs modern mobile devices.
- A new smartphone from Microsoft will come out ... maybe. It is unclear whether this device will be released under the Lumia brand (most likely not) or under the new Surface brand.
- Relax, nobody forbids you to use your Windows smartphone. Paul complains that he gets a lot of strange comments from users - they somehow think that he is trying to convince them not to use Windows Phone. Not at all! Turot simply suggests that you stop worshiping Windows Phone as a promising platform and something that you can recommend to your friends and acquaintances.
“If you know where you are going, no problem. But stop pretending that Windows Phone solves problems that iPhone and Android can't... These platforms are now vastly superior to Windows Phone. Excuse me".
From the point of view of the Windows Phone fan, by and large, nothing has changed: Microsoft will continue to support the platform they like, and they can safely continue to use devices and maybe even buy new devices in the future. For the rest of the world - and that, unfortunately for WP fans, includes 99.9% of users - not much has changed either. Most people can still safely ignore Windows Phone.