14 DAY TRIAL // We’ve known for a while that Microsoft was planning to retire the Microsoft Store for Business and Education, and now it looks like the whole thing is likely to happen rather sooner than later.
Beginning mid-April, Microsoft will no longer allow users to buy apps from this store, and while the company doesn’t say it specifically, it’s believed this is the first step towards the full retirement of the Store for Business and Education.
Happening sooner than anticipated
As reported by Neowin, Microsoft has published a notification on the official store page to indicate that while paid apps would no longer be available for purchase from the store, they would continue to run and receive updates normally. Free apps wouldn’t be impacted by the whole thing.
“Starting April 14, 2021, all apps that charge a base price above free will no longer be available to buy in the Microsoft Store for Business and Education. If you’ve already bought a paid app, you can still use it, but no new purchases will be possible from businessstore.microsoft.com or educationstore.microsoft.com,” Microsoft explained.
“Also, you won’t be able to buy additional licenses for apps you already bought. You can still assign and reassign licenses for apps that you already own and use the private store. Apps with a base price of “free” will still be available. This change doesn’t impact apps in the Microsoft Store on Windows 10.”
For the time being, Microsoft hasn’t provided any other details, but the change is seen by many as another step towards the end of UWP apps as a whole.
We have reached out to Microsoft for some information in this regard and will publish a follow-up if and when we hear back. For now, it looks like Microsoft has also started mailing users to tell them about the change, so an official announcement in this regard might not be too far.