Microsoft abandons Windows 10 Android Bridge project

Microsoft has dropped plans to add the ability to run Android applications within Windows 10, pointing developers to its open-source Windows Bridge for iOS as the sole route for porting mobile software across.

Announced at the company's Build conference last year, Windows Bridge for Android - codenamed Astoria - promised to make it simple for developers to take existing Android applications and port them across to the Windows Store for installation on Windows 10, Windows Mobile 10, and the Xbox console platform. If completed, the software would have potentially vastly increased the number of applications available on Microsoft's minority-share mobile platform, but this week the company confirmed that it was abandoning the project.

'We received a lot of feedback that having two Bridge technologies to bring code from mobile operating systems to Windows was unnecessary, and the choice between them could be confusing,' Microsoft's Kevin Gallo claimed in the announcement late last night. 'We have carefully considered this feedback and decided that we would focus our efforts on the Windows Bridge for iOS and make it the single Bridge option for bringing mobile code to all Windows 10 devices, including Xbox and PCs.'

The shift to focus on iOS means that developers who produce software solely for Apple's mobile platform or who develop for both Android and iOS will still have a framework for quickly porting their applications to Windows 10, while those who develop exclusively for Android will have no such crutch to aid them.