Microsoft Confirms Decision To Kill Project Astoria

Microsoft today confirmed that they are no longer developing Project Astoria, a Universal Windows Platform Bridge toolkit that would have allowed developers to build Windows apps for phones by reusing their Android code. Microsoft originally announced Project Astoria along with Windows Bridge for iOS (project “Islandwood”) at Build last year and after few months, there was no update from Microsoft regarding the Project Astoria.

Kevin Gallo from Windows team today provided the following reason for killing Windows Bridge for Android (project “Astoria”),

We received a lot of feedback that having two Bridge technologies to bring code from mobile operating systems to Windows was unnecessary, and the choice between them could be confusing. We have carefully considered this feedback and decided that we would focus our efforts on the Windows Bridge for iOS and make it the single Bridge option for bringing mobile code to all Windows 10 devices, including Xbox and PCs. For those developers who spent time investigating the Android Bridge, we strongly encourage you to take a look at the iOS Bridge and Xamarin as great solutions.

One good news is that Microsoft is actively developing Project Islandwood, the Windows Bridge for iOS. Just last week, they released an update which included the first ARM32 preview compiler drop. So far, Microsoft focused on API coverage for game developers, but now they are expanding their Bridges API coverage for all app types by adding support for additional frameworks, etc. So, expect more iOS apps on Windows Store in the coming months!