14 DAY TRIAL // Box, which at some point was one of the biggest fans of Microsoft’s UWP push with Windows 10, has decided to abandon the platform completely and pull its apps from the Microsoft Store.
As a result, Box apps for Windows phones, Windows 8, and Windows 10 devices have been removed from the Microsoft Store, and the company says that on March 1, they also stopped working. This means that even if Box apps are installed on your phones or PCs, they should no longer be able to connect to your accounts.
The company doesn’t reveal the reason for discontinuing UWP apps, but it’s not a secret why this happened. The UWP push hasn’t experienced such a terrific success and the phone platform altogether failed, with Microsoft itself confirming its demise in late 2017.
Switch to Android or iOS
Box says it will continue to maintain Windows 8 and Windows 10 apps (for the desktop), but on mobile, it recommends switching to Android or iOS, an advice that most of the developers leaving Windows phones offered to users in the last few months.
“For users with an Android or iOS device, we recommend installing our applications for these platforms immediately to start taking advantage of the enhanced mobile experiences. If a user is on Windows 10, he/she can continue to access Box via Box Sync or the Box Drive Public Beta. If your device is on an alternate platform, we recommend using our mobile web experience to access Box on the go,” Box says.
Seeing Box leaving the Microsoft Store is without a doubt a major loss for Microsoft, especially as the company struggled to convince the biggest companies and developers to support its UWP concept. For the time being, however, this isn’t happening, and the Microsoft Store comes with rather limited options, especially as top-rated developers are still not interested in porting their apps.