back to article Even Microsoft's lost interest in Windows Phone: Skype and Yammer apps killed

Microsoft’s given users of its collaboration apps on Windows Phone under a month’s warning of their demise. A support note from late last week advises that “Windows phone apps for Skype for Business, Microsoft Teams, and Yammer are retiring on May 20, 2018.” “Retiring” means all three will vanish from the Microsoft store on …

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  1. Dan 55 Silver badge

    MS kills UWP apps, Telephony API appears in Windows

    Wouldn't it be more of a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: MS kills UWP apps, Telephony API appears in Windows

      Microsoft have been in a death spiral for years. Have you not noticed? Their only saving grace is their stockpiles of cash, which serves two primary purposes.

      1/ Pay people to like them and use their products (They use the term "tech evangelists", but they are basically blogger whores who write anything Microsoft want if the money is good)

      2/ Develop lots of products and throw them all at the wall in the hope something sticks

      1. Anonymous Coward
        WTF?

        Re: MS kills UWP apps, Telephony API appears in Windows

        Wow a death spiral where you have record profits in the billions of dollars.

        Do you live in some sort of parallel universe, where increasing profits is the signs of a failing company?

        1. chivo243 Silver badge

          Re: MS kills UWP apps, Telephony API appears in Windows

          @Lost all faith...

          MS is like the obese person in the room. Getting them out is nearly impossible. You need to remove walls and get cranes in to do the lifting... That is probably why MS keep making money.

          Or maybe it's just called vendor lock in?

          1. bombastic bob Silver badge
            Devil

            Re: MS kills UWP apps, Telephony API appears in Windows

            "Or maybe it's just called vendor lock in?"

            That may be what it really IS. But I'll tell you what it is NOT: It is NOT "their customers actually WANT their products". It's more like an addiction, or a near-monopoly.

            Any current earnings 'boon' due to data slurping and spying is short-lived, almost like a 'dead cat bounce'.

            1. Anonymous Bullard

              Re: MS kills UWP apps, Telephony API appears in Windows

              No no, not an addiction.

              An addiction is when you actually feel relief when you get a hit.

        2. Dan 55 Silver badge

          Re: MS kills UWP apps, Telephony API appears in Windows

          Isn't MS like Hooli, not very good at cloud or mobile but their strongest selling product is the software equivalent of "The Box"?

        3. Zippy's Sausage Factory

          Re: MS kills UWP apps, Telephony API appears in Windows

          Wow a death spiral where you have record profits in the billions of dollars.

          Do you live in some sort of parallel universe, where increasing profits is the signs of a failing company?

          You're confusing short-term financial results with long-term survival potential. Remember that those record profits are coming from markets that are visibly disappearing - PC desktop sales are going down, Linux has no licence fees, AWS is eating Azure's (and everybody else's) lunch.

          Microsoft will continue to be around, but it's unlikely that they will be the same level of major player in five to ten years that they are now. That's why they are trying to transition users to subscription-based products (Office 3.65, for example) rather than the purchase-based model that they have been relying on for so many years.

          The question is whether, when the Windows franchise finally runs out of steam, will they have done enough to keep going? Right now, I'd say it's too early to tell for sure.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: MS kills UWP apps, Telephony API appears in Windows

            "Remember that those record profits are coming from markets that are visibly disappearing - PC desktop sales are going down, Linux has no licence fees,"

            Windows server is still growing market share as are most Mictosoft application servers. Desktops market share is stable as are other key revenue streams like Xbox. And Microsoft lead everyone in cloud revenue.

            "AWS is eating Azure's (and everybody else's) lunch"

            Nope, Microsoft overtook AWS in annual cloud revenue run rate 3 quarters ago and are growing much faster.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: MS kills UWP apps, Telephony API appears in Windows

              >Nope, Microsoft overtook AWS in annual cloud revenue run rate 3 quarters ago and are growing much faster.

              AWS has 4x the revenue of Azure as of March 2018 - and 41% to MS's 29% of market share. And that's with MS including MS Office in their figures.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: MS kills UWP apps, Telephony API appears in Windows

                "AWS has 4x the revenue of Azure as of March 2018 - and 41% to MS's 29% of market share. And that's with MS including MS Office in their figures"

                Just look at both sets of quarterly results. Microsofts cloud division earns well over $20 billion and is growing faster whereas AWS only just got there. Yes that includes O365. Azure itself also overtook AWS in IAAS last year. AWS still leads in some numbers but not for long on current trends.

              2. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: MS kills UWP apps, Telephony API appears in Windows

                >>AWS has 4x the revenue of Azure as of March 2018 - and 41% to MS's 29% of market share. And that's with MS including MS Office in their figures.

                AWS's current revenue is about $5 billion a quarter. Microsoft's cloud division (which includes things like O365) exceeded that a year ago.

                However if you want to compare just Azure for some reason, then yes AWS annual revenue is 3x Azure ($6.5 billion as of Q4 2017). However Azure has been growing at double the rate of AWS in recent quarters, so even if you limit you view of Microsoft cloud to just Azure - it's going to beat AWS in that soon too.

          2. 2Nick3

            Re: MS kills UWP apps, Telephony API appears in Windows

            "Microsoft will continue to be around, but it's unlikely that they will be the same level of major player in five to ten years that they are now."

            Don't we hear this every 5-10 years about MS?

      2. ArrZarr Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: MS kills UWP apps, Telephony API appears in Windows

        2/ Develop lots of products and throw them all at the wall in the hope something sticks

        This phenomenon has a name, it's called the economy.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: MS kills UWP apps, Telephony API appears in Windows

        "Microsoft have been in a death spiral for years. Have you not noticed? "

        No, we must have missed that amongst the many years of consistent profits and the current record share price. And overlooked that they are market leader in cloud by revenue

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: MS kills UWP apps, Telephony API appears in Windows

        Wish that muppet with the 2nd post hadn't hijacked this whole thread. Its perfectly reasonable to talk about the demise and epic fail WP was without caring about the behemoth corporation itself which will probably be around at least as long as most people posting on here. IBM is even more suicidal and less relevant to the consumer and even they will probably be around long after most of us retire.

    2. phuzz Silver badge

      Re: MS kills UWP apps, Telephony API appears in Windows

      Microsoft has long been large enough for different departments to be effectively working in opposition to each other.

      Look at the way the Windows team try and introduce a coherent new design every so often, only for the Office team to create their own separate GUI system.

      Or indeed there's the parts of MS who are working on Linux compatibility (like the bash subsystem, or the HyperV drivers in the Linux kernel), presumably unnoticed by their sales division.

      So yes, the left had of Microsoft doesn't know what the right hand is doing, and neither of them have any idea what that tentacle over there is doing...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Devil

        "Windows team try and introduce a coherent new design every so often"

        You mean at every release, and even some minor one, now? And "coherent" took a very different meaning too...

    3. InNY
      Happy

      Re: MS kills UWP apps, Telephony API appears in Windows

      I'm calling you on this one. Your statement makes an assumption that Microsoft's right hand knows what it is doing...

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: MS kills UWP apps, Telephony API appears in Windows

      Presumably the apps still work on Windows Mobile. Windows Phone is now out of support anyway.

    5. CheesyTheClown

      Re: MS kills UWP apps, Telephony API appears in Windows

      Nope, both hands know what’s happening. The telephony APIs allow for Android integration. So the APIs permit Windows 10 Always Online devices (laptops with built in LTE) to provide a consistent experience across phone and laptop.

      For instance, you will probably be able to make a call from your laptop. They also integrated messaging.

      But I guess that’s not as exciting as assuming it means that Microsoft is confused. :)

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Microsoft not 'adding value' to its software by constant fiddling has got to be a good thing. I might move to a Windows phone if Microsoft is truly serious in its promise of no support.

    1. Aitor 1

      Support

      The reason I abandoned microsoft mobile is that they have been chaging their mind (And APIs) with every version. That is a nightmare to support, and lost trust a decade ago.

      Removing spyke for business is stupid in my book.. I just dont understand it, they should just take the OS to the back and put it out of its misery.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Support

        "they should just take the OS to the back and put it out of its misery." .....

        They can't do that as unlike many phone vendors they have committed to security patches and a life cycle. My Windows phone is 3 years old, and will continue to get monthly security patches until July next year.

        I'm holding out till then hoping for guaranteed security patching on Android phones so I don't have to buy an iPhone.

        1. JoJ

          Re: Support

          I feel your pain and dread of the iPhone world.

          I think it is probably the iPhone world to where we will have to go, after Windows Phone.

          But Google up yourself some Samsung Note 8 Enterprise Version goodness, before you do!

          It's only sold in America and Germany at present, but we're opening a German subsidiary, just to get our hands on the supply. And we're going to trial a private walled garden with the phones on actual IP addresses on the vLAN where on premises Azure and O365 will be running, delivered by customised MVNO (private label, to be flash) all for our own use, and one long standing customer who are a indy oil trading desk, who are not quite sponsoring the effort, but the industry verticals interest is making speaking to the Microsoft people much easier..

          Enterprise Note 8 models.

          Just check them out.

          And help us get these in channel here!

          1. werdsmith Silver badge

            Enterprise Note 8 models.

            But it uses Android.

            I don't like Apple or iOS but I tolerate it so I can avoid Android.

            This $1000 Android 7 phone is actually real too.

            Because corporate money can be spent without a pain in the wallet.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Support

          Where does this so called writer of this article get his information from? Skype has been integrated in the last Windows 10 mobile release (April) to the Messenger Application, it does connect to Skype For Business services so in that respect there is no need for a separate application.

          As for Android, Google have released Certified for Android For Enterprise which means any manufacturer releasing certified handsets have to patch minimum of 90 days, some (Including Nokia) are doing monthly updates, with minimum spec of 32gb Storage, 3gb RAM and must use Android One (Which means no bloatware and no Airtime provider software forced upon handsets), so I would say Android has matured.

          Nokia, LG, Huwai and LG are certified Android For Enterprise although Samsung are not because they won't commit to more than two years updates on their handsets (Google want 3) and also won't support Zero Touch as they want everyone to use and register with Knox. I'm sure they'll backtrack.

      2. JoJ

        Re: Support

        Why on the good earth was Microsoft's premier telephonic application ever even a separate distinct application on their premier telephonic product?

        I know Skype integrated very well, so well that this news just booked us buying a crate of LUMIA 950XL just for the purpose of a smart Skype walkabout in the office, if nobody will be seen dead carrying one outside.

        I realise this sounds like I am clamouring for a avuncular relationship, which just isn't going to happen, with Microsoft barely out of their salad days, but I expect from my software overlords a complete solution including telephony. Google can do it. Kinda. I keep forgetting which app is being shuttered next.... Hmm... Maybe this telephone lark is a financial mugs game. I think it must be. But I have to make plans on a decade plus timeframe. I have to assume that the application code we write today will still be chugging along come 2030 and beyond, if I'm to keep my job.*

        And today we face a existential telephonic crisis because the new generations are not actually using voice telephony. It was bad enough to start out needing to get past gatekeepers to reach anyone who could do anything in business, but then I grew up and my contemporaries and I all acquired gatekeepers ourselves (even if mine is the force field of ingrained antipathy and synaptic scar tissue radiation still reverberating since our Oracle shop days) and yet woe betide you dare try to get a millennial in the end of the blower: only helicopter parents and social workers must have done that while they grew up "drop calling" one another and texting stuff they really didn't know would be understood by the other end, only teenage indifference to reality enabled a false sense of understanding... The experience is such a fright of passive aggressive silence... and this is the generation demanding care and consideration, oh my then stop biting this food hand I'm nursing here why don't you...

        Oh yeah, back to being a mature fourth decade OFH, listen Dude Redmond Guy, We Pay T-H-I-S MUCH MOOLAH to you because we're really very happy when we forget reason and ho with your office not quite a year was that the extra nine you couldn't afford or did three quarters look funny on the logo, cos it wouldn't on my logs...

        I mean we like the new slurpy stuff because we pay even another order of magnitude than most people to have the thing privatised to our desire. Self Slurp. (Great for security, think about it.)

        But I really think that our contract alone could have paid for Windows Phone to carry on.

        The sorry state of affairs is that if they only finally come out with anything at all, even in another year, we'll forgive them. If only they build atop what they can do now. Or yesterday. Or just all that they used to be good at..

        *This is me, co-founder here, planning our to my last natural years in my business life. I grew up with Microsoft. Alongside, I may better say, because it was 1999 before I felt confident that we could go places with the OS, and if you learned how to write COM, COM+ etc, you're still good to today. I lived programmatically the life of any garden stone roof dweller, so long as it wasn't overturned, or I can withstand the glare, it's always nice and dank and warm under here. They don't fff with this work level, down here. Ever. And the awesomeness of hiding out in the dingly dwelling dankness just happens to be called a Mr. Don Box. You know, chief architect at Azure. Who designed the stuff I was just getting scatalogical about. And it's strangely...samey..whodda thunk? This is so cool to blog about it even if I know it's the reason I'll finally do a blog plop on the internet's, I almost don't want to say anything about this. But I have. The Azure plumbing is old skool Don Box, and if you ever found his books the salvation of fixing a VB OLE object to which source was never probably even backed up, and you want to change oh about anything of it, so you're living the COM raw memory interface definitions (which for their kind are actually loveable,), well Don is the don for all that. Azure is the absolute proof that Microsoft has come full circle to the early nineties. In this scenario, for the long term, it's a good thing.

  3. Mystic Megabyte
    WTF?

    win10

    Baked in snooping telemetry, now with added audio!

    1. The obvious

      Re: win10

      Because google and apple have never been caught illegally slurping da.... oh wait. Talk about from the frying pan into the fire.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: win10

        Pretty sure Google haven't, they are in compliance with their privacy policy Got anything to back that up?

        1. AMBxx Silver badge

          Re: win10

          >>> Pretty sure Google haven't, they are in compliance with their privacy policy Got anything to back that up?

          Yep - there was a bug in the way Apple enforced privacy in Safari. Google used it to track people who had specifically said that they didn't want to be tracked.

          Other than that, most websites have a google tracker watching you. I don't remember giving my permission. Might not be illegal, but should be.

          1. Stuart Castle Silver badge

            Re: win10

            AMBxx, you forgot the Streetview Wifi slurp, where Google's Street View cars accidentally copied data sent over any open Wifi networks in their vicinity.. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/14/google_street_view_cars_were_collecting_payload_data_from_wifi_networks/ .

            OK, you could argue that people shouldn't be using open Wifi (and you'd be right), but Google should not have recorded it.

            1. Richard Plinston

              Re: win10

              > but Google should not have recorded it.

              It was unintentional and was unlikely to have recorded _any_ payload data that could be understood.

              Your link fails, a better one is;

              https://googleblog.blogspot.co.nz/2010/05/wifi-data-collection-update.html

          2. Richard Plinston

            Re: win10

            > most websites have a google tracker watching you.

            They may be attempting to watch me, but that fails because I have NoScript, RequestPolicy and others.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: win10

          "Pretty sure Google haven't, they are in compliance with their privacy policy"

          When their privacy policy pretty much is, we track everything you do and use that to sell ads, it's pretty had not to be compliant.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Because google and apple have never been caught illegally

        Still, MS did a U turn when it transformed Windows in a deep slurping tool.

        Everybody knows what Google is, Apple can slurp less getting a lot of cash from hardware unlike Google, and someone hoped to have a non-slurping alternative still able to run the tools they need and without a single hardware supplier like Apple.

        Unluckily Nadella suddenly decided customers are cows to milk for data, and not sacred at all, so they can be fully exploited at will. Nobody saw it coming, and that makes it even more painful.

    2. chivo243 Silver badge

      Re: win10

      Funny, I just installed Win10 less than an hour ago for some poor sod that needs windows to control some industrial doodad... There was a screen where I could turn off a decent amount of this slurp stuff.

      Not a fan of MS, but will use the right tool for the job...

      yes, yes, I said tool and job in the same sentence ;-}

  4. ratfox
    Windows

    “may continue to work, but we can’t provide any guarantees.”

    Ouch.

    "Maybe it will, maybe it won't. We don't care either way."

    1. Edwin

      sigh...

      Bought a new phone just before MS announced the death of the platform. Wonder if MS will sponsor a replacement handset for me (and the other guy still on the platform)?

      Teams is a pity as it's one of the better-functioning O365 apps on mobile, and means I can do ad-hoc chat with colleagues in a completely separate space from Whatsapp...

      1. redneck

        Re: sigh...

        count your blessings.

        I bought an HP Veer one month before Apoteker killed the platform. I bought a Windows phone to replace it.

        I guess it is time to get an iphone.

  5. xbit

    "Microsoft’s advice for effected users [both of them, LOL - Ed]"

    Tut, tut. Your editor has the time to make jokes not but enough time to correct poor grammar.

  6. Michael Habel

    "Microsoft’s advice for effected users [both of them, LOL - Ed]"

    Surly that's...

    "Microsoft’s advice for affected users [both of them, LOL - Ed]".

    Or is this a Colour vs Color kinda deal?

    1. Tom 7

      RE "Microsoft’s advice for effected users [both of them, LOL - Ed]"

      effected means to do something so he was probably right, most users dont do anything with the product.

      1. AMBxx Silver badge
        Windows

        Re: RE "Microsoft’s advice for effected users [both of them, LOL - Ed]"

        2 users of Windows Mobile? That's 2 more than use Yammer.

        1. AMBxx Silver badge

          Re: RE "Microsoft’s advice for effected users [both of them, LOL - Ed]"

          Is the downvote for WM or Yammer? I'd love to know. I was a big fan of WM and only switched when my 950XL died. Yammer comes as part of O365 and I have no idea why I'd want it.

    2. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Headmaster

      'Effect' vs 'Affect'

      'effect' is a noun. You _could_ verb it, I suppose, but that's what 'affect' does (the verb).

      You had an effect, by affecting things. So the users were 'affected'.

      [but I understood it without the grammar fascism, heh]

      1. Milton

        Re: 'Effect' vs 'Affect'

        "Affect" and "effect" are both nouns and both verbs, with different meanings in several cases.

        • You may have an effect upon Something. (noun)

        • That Something will have been affected by you. (verb)

        • You may effect a change. (verb) — The change will have been effected. (verb)

        • You may affect your wife's emotions. (verb)

        • Your psychologist may observe that you have a strange affect. (noun)

        The last one is rarely heard as it's a term of art. The former four are all common uses, though the first, second and fourth are probably the more common. It's not a 'color/colour' thing in the sense of US vs British English, but you will observe incorrect usages much more frequently in US content simply because of their appalling standards of general education. Even their president has poor language, grammar and spelling skills. Mind you, he is as dumb as a stump.

        That all said, you could argue for some leeway in sentences like:

        "The Earth's gravity Æffects the Moon's orbit."

        The Moon orbits Earth because of Earth's gravity, so it must be correct to write "Earth's gravity effects the Moon's orbit", insofar as the orbit is actually created by—brought into existence because of—Earth's gravity.

        But the shape of the Moon's orbit is also modified by Earth's gravity, so it must also be correct to write "Earth's gravity affects the Moon's orbit", insofar as the orbit is modified, or changed by Earth's gravity.

        I mention this just to confuse folks and revel in the sheer unadulterated weirdness of English language.

        You're all very welcome ;-)

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Back to the 80's

    shouting "I'm on the phone" into the corner of a 12" (ph)tablet surface balanced on your shoulder.

    That's all I have in my head now...

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: Back to the 80's

      it would be funnier if Pee Wee screamed it while in a biker bar [followed by a dance presentation of 'Tequila']

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