Microsoft won’t bring Android apps to Windows 10 after all

Things aren’t looking good for Windows 10 Mobile, as Microsoft has cancelled Project Astoria, the initiative that was supposed to allow developers to easily port their Android apps over to Windows 10 Mobile. The company announced on Thursday that it’s no longer working on the initiative, but considering how Microsoft recently acquired a startup that specializes in cross-platform development tools, it’s possible that the company’s plans to bring Android apps over to Windows 10 Mobile won’t be dying alongside Project Astoria.

The day after announcing it had purchased cross-platform mobile tool vendor Xamarin, Microsoft officials are offering a few new details about the company’s Universal Windows Platforms onboarding strategy. As previously rumored, Microsoft is dropping work on its Android “bridge,” or toolkit for bringing Android apps to Windows 10. It’s putting all its mobile-toolkit eggs in its iOS bridge basket instead. Microsoft execs are not yet going so far as to declare that Xamarin will be key to Microsoft’s quest to attract developers to write Universal — and not just Universal Windows Platform — apps, using a common framework and set of tools, that target operating systems including, but not limited to Windows 10. That’s what many of us industry watchers are expecting may happen at some point. Instead, Microsoft officials are opening up more on what’s next for the company’s bridges, or development toolkits, for Windows 10, which they expect to offer alongside Xamarin’s technology which allows C# and F# developers to write native apps for iOS, Android, Windows and Mac OS.