14 DAY TRIAL // There are several important developers who decided to abandon Windows Phone because of the declining market share, and today, another company announces that it’s leaving the platform in order to concentrate more on Android and iOS.
Hike Messenger, a popular messaging app coming from India, will no longer work on Windows phones, the company announced today, as it’s moving the focus entirely to Android and iOS, both of which have larger market share and power nearly the entire smartphone business in India.
“As we continue to simplify how people connect and interact with content and services on mobile, we need to make sure we focus our efforts on the mobile platforms the vast majority of India uses. This enables us to address their needs faster and better. To that extent, you’ve seen us double down on our efforts on Android and iOS, which make up more than 98% of the smartphone market share in India,” the company said in an announcement today.
Windows Phone will be one of the essential platforms losing support for Hike Messenger, but at the same time, the application will also stop working on S40, S60, BlackBerry, and BlackBerry 10.
No new features and updates
Hike Messenger will continue running normally on all devices where it’s already installed, but no updates and new features would be released in the coming months.
“In line with this goal, we’ve made a tough decision to pause new development and hence further updates for Windows Phone (WP) platform starting today. If you are an existing Hike user on Windows Phone, you can still continue messaging your friends as before, but we won’t be shipping any new features on this platform,” the firm says.
Unfortunately, Hike Messenger is quite a big loss for Windows Phone, especially because it was quite a popular app, and users of Microsoft’s mobile platform would be left with no other option to connect to the service.
It goes without saying that developers giving up on apps make it a lot more difficult for Windows 10 Mobile to improve its share, even though everyone, Microsoft included, now seems to put all hopes in Windows 10 ARM.