Microsoft Officially brings Project Astoria to an end

In a sad turn of events,the United States based tech giant, Microsoft, has announced that its shelving of making a Windows Bridge for Android, a tool which would have allowed turning Android apps into universal Windows apps able to run on all types of Windows devices.

“Project Astoria” was brought into existence at the 2015 Build conference alongside “Project Islandwood.” The latter gave developers a platform to port over iOS apps to numerous Windows 10 devices (including Xbox and PCs). Interestingly, while microsoft has called time on “Project Astoria”, its sister, “Project Islandwood” is still alive. This news also comes on the heels of Microsoft’s much talked about aquisition of cross-platform application development company Xamarin.

Throwing more light on the move,  Kevin Gallo, director of program management for the Windows Developer Platform team for Windows 10 at Microsoft, wrote in a blog,

“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.”