Has anyone here ever developed why Windows phone app? If so, what prompted you to stop/discontinue?

I personally liked Windows phone (haters, please refrain) and I really wanna know why app makers discontinued making/supporting apps, making win phones disappear.

A friend of mine was developping for windows phone with passion. He said the system was way ahead of iOS and Android and much better thsn people would think.

However, the general perception of Windowd phone was not that great. This lead to few users and a small eco system. As a dev, it is now just more profitable to go with Android or iOS. You can reach more users.

That's what I wanna understand. Why was the "general perception" that way?

I guess a bit of 'jumping on the bandwagon at the worst time'. W mobile popped up at the top of the 'we have 8 quadrillion apps' marketing strategies. being a new platform, of course WM couldn't compete with that. I remember thinking of buying one and dismissing the idea because I found the apps ecosystem too small.

I think that combined to rather limited hardware selection and no 'oh shit, Apple made a thing, let's buy it' effect lead to the slow sinking of the platform, and while fun is part of app development, putting food on the plate usually also is, and that requires users

I never developed for WP but I had a phone and loved it. The OS was better than iOS or android but it came too late. Developers didn't develop because of few users and users didn't switch because they were already invested in apps not available on the platform.

From my experience even the apps that did come were usually well behind the other versions. The Facebook app barely received feature updates, and if they did it was months after, same with Twitter and many others. Then many apps just never came. One independent developer created a tonne of awesome apps such as 6snap and 6sec which were the only way to get Snapchat or Vine. But they were forcefully removed by Snapchat etc and never replaced by them.

I had to switch in the end, the app situation became too difficult to live with, shame because it's about the only Microsoft product I can truly say I liked. And credit to them, they put a lot of effort into co developing with Facebook etc to get something on the platform.

I was using lumia 520 I think and it was very good experience. I didnt like google support for his apps like youtube, gmail, hangouts and such. Developing apps was nice too because I like C#. Developing Android is pain in the ass and about iOS I dont wanna start... So yeah

Windows Phone was way ahead lf iOS and android. The phones generally had better quality too

If you had to buy a car, would you buy one that had all the bells and whistles you wanted, or another one that was a similar price that said they had the potential to have all the bells and whistles. Typically people just get what they want instead of getting something that may eventually have what they want. And as app developer I don't have the time or money to target a platform that may take off when I can capture 90% or the current market while doing significantly less work than if I wanted to capture 100% of the market. Its just like when you go to make an android app and you can see in Android Studio the percentage of active devices that will be able to use the app based on the comparability level you pick. There no point creating a ton of code to support the vast minority unless you are getting paid well to do it.

Windows phone came too late to the market without distinctive features. Most developers want their apps to reach majority users.

Developing for windows is really good compared to android. Sadly the user base is just nonexistent. I still use Windows phone, and UWP is really easy to develop for.

@CristCD I broke mine so I'm forced to use an android and it's so pissing off.

@hexc maybe that's why innovation is dying. Completely valid point though.

@dtaposh For one there was Windows Mobile (the one from before iPhones existed), which was utter crap and tinted the Windows Phone experience way before Windows Phone came out. Some people don't even bother to differentiate the two.

Second factor is that Microsoft came in with a third option to iOS and Android. The market was already cleanly separated into Apple fanboys and those who did not want iPhones and went with Android.

Windows Phone did come too late to the party. But then again in the desktop segment, there are also only two players: Luxurious apple and windows for the masses. A third does not fit in (Linux, I know, but that's a tiny niche).

@paranoidAndroid so I guess I gotta blame the bling boys who wanted an apple and Apple haters. :/

Thanks for the insights (:

@dtaposh <1% of the mobile market is why people don't develop for it.

It just doesn't make good financial sense for a company to invest in a port of their app to Windows.

There are still a few indipendent developers who release new apps and support old ones, but as others here already said the marketplace is so small there isn't a valid reason for a company to invest money.
Microsoft did nothing to prevent this, and since they started to ignore a lot of old Lumias models by not releasing new updates (there are users which still have Anniversary Update), made it really hard (do you want an app which looks great but works only on the highend Lumias, or do you prefer an old looking app made with old apis that works everywhere but looks really bad?).

So < 1% of marketshare, and still a presence of fragmentation (different OS versions).
No company will spend money to create a new app which works on less than half of the 1% Windows phones, or invest even more to support 2 different versions of the app to still have only 1% of users more.

I will continue to do it, but I'm indipendent and it's my passion.

I thought Microsoft has already discontinued Windows Phone

@emyu10 Windows Phone is officially no longer being developed.

However, you can still code UWP apps that will run just fine on phones, should they ever decide to make a Surface phone.