14 DAY TRIAL // Google isn’t quite the biggest fan of Windows Phone, and we've known that already. The company isn’t bringing any of its super popular apps on the platform, and from time to time, it makes changes to its services that make it a nightmare for Windows Phone users to access their Google accounts.
And now, Google is making another change that could impact Windows Phone, as it’s deprecating AdMob SDK for Windows Phone 8 on November 1 this year.
Specifically, starting with this date, developers who were using AdMob to serve ads in their Windows Phone apps will no longer be able to create ads on the AdMob front end and download the Windows Phone 8 SDK from Google’s servers.
In emails sent to developers this morning, the company informs that “AdMob Windows Phone 8 developer documentation and samples and Windows Phone 8 category on the Google Mobile Ads SDK developer forum will be removed” as well.
What about the reason?
Google adds that “we currently have no plans to block ad serving for existing Windows Phone 8 apps on November 1, but we cannot make any ad serving guarantees after that time.” In other words, while ads should continue working after November 1, they can disappear at any time beyond this date, and you can’t blame Google for this.
And while Google hasn’t actually provided a reason for this decision, it’s not hard to imagine that the dropping share of Windows Phone could be one of the catalysts that forced the company step away from the platform.
Furthermore, forecasts regarding Windows Phone’s future are not at all optimistic, with recent IDC data showing that Microsoft’s mobile platform is likely to improve to only 0.8 percent market share in 2020, as the company focuses all its effort on the enterprise. The consumer market might thus receive less attention, even with the arrival of the eagerly anticipated Surface Phone that’s likely to include several enterprise-oriented features.