14 DAY TRIAL // This year’s Build developer conference, which will be a digital-only event streamed online, will mark the end of the UWP concept as we know it in Windows 10.
In the session agenda for the upcoming event, Microsoft explains that it’s planning to unify Win32 and UWP apps for reason that the company doesn’t share but which isn’t impossible to figure out: the UWP experiment failed, so focusing on Win32 is the thing that makes sense right now.
As Microsoft watcher Paul Thurrott notes, this could be “the final nail in the UWP coffin,” especially because the Redmond-based software appears to be spending quite a lot of time at Build to explain this unification of UWP and Win32.
Goodbye, UWP?
One of the sessions will be hosted by Jesse Bishop, Principal Program Manager Lead at Microsoft, but it goes without saying that the company itself doesn’t yet provide too many specifics at this point.
“Learn how the Windows app platform is evolving and unifying Win32 and UWP so your present and future apps can easily target 1 billion+ Windows devices,” Microsoft explains in the agenda details.
The UWP concept, which stands for the Universal Windows Platform, was launched specifically for Windows 10 to power universal apps that would be available on more than just one device. In essence an evolved version of the concept of universal apps that Microsoft has dreamed about ever since it rolled out Windows 8, UWP was targeted as Windows 10 devices like PCs, mobile, Xbox, and the HoloLens.
The developer adoption of UWP, however, has been substantially below expectations, and the strategy itself changed once the software giant retired Windows 10 Mobile. Right now, UWP appears to be just another failed experiment that Microsoft wants to forget, and Build could bring more information on how the company wants to do that.