"Reality is Cruel" as Tencent drops all Windows 10 Mobile development

So if you still had any hope of WeChat for Windows 10 Mobile happening, now’s the time to bury it. It’s not.

China’s Tencent, the Developers behind WeChat and QQ have now confirmed that they will be dropping Windows 10 Mobile from development, and they blame Microsoft.

As we noted earlier, Microsoft had initially lined Tencent up as one of the launch partners for their Windows 10 UWP platform, but it didn’t pan out. Even worse, Microsoft’s own mobile platform kept performing worse and worse, making it slightly odd for any company to choose to develop for Windows Phone. In a sentiment many former Windows Phone fans will share, Tencent noted “despite the era of Windows 10 Mobile incoming, we may not follow closely this time. It is not because we are changing, but the reality is cruel, which drives us to change and adapt to the times”.

Windows 10 Mobile may be coming, but it is not competitive nor does it offer anything for the modern smartphone user besides an impractical party trick. Aside from that, if users can see that Microsoft is focusing on other platforms, then developers can see it too and they aren’t pleased. Tencent pointed out that “users on the Windows Phone platform keeps declining and have moved to other platforms, but [we] didn’t notice that Microsoft is showing any effort to retain them”. Microsoft – in chasing its users away – is also chasing developers away by its conduct. If you needed your answer for why Windows 10 Mobile Twitter, Facebook and other promised apps haven’t appeared, here’s why. Microsoft doesn’t care, therefore no one does.

Windows Phone held just over 1% of sales share last quarter and managed to sell less than half of what it did from the year before. Windows Phone fans may be hoping for a Surface Phone to turn things around, but Tencent’s words still ring true.

“Reality is cruel”