SAP has a made a strategic decision to sunset Windows 10 Mobile and Windows 8.1 support for the SAP Cloud for Customer extended edition apps with our May 2019 release.
The extended edition apps will be removed from the Microsoft Store for Windows 10 Mobile and Windows 8.1 as of May 2019.
Key Factors driving this strategy:
Windows 10 Mobile is no longer under active development
Microsoft has revealed that the company would no longer actively develop new features or hardware for Windows phones, citing its low market share, and the resultant lack of third-party software for the platform.
Microsoft had largely abandoned its mobile business and having focused software efforts on providing apps and services compatible with Android and iOS instead. Development of Windows 10 Mobile will be limited to maintenance releases and patches.
As the platform is not actively developed, introducing newer features that are supported on other modern mobile operating systems becomes increasingly difficult to achieve on Windows 10 mobile.
We end up releasing features on iOS and Android much quicker as these platforms are more evolved and up to date.
Also, adoption of Windows 10 mobile is extremely low in our user base.
Windows 8.1 has reached the end of its lifecycle
Microsoft has ended mainstream support for Windows 8.1 as of January 2018
Also, a majority of our customers use Window 10 and we are seeing a major trend of users migrating from from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 in our user base.
SAP and SAP Customers would like to streamline the mobile experience
Currently majority of our customers are on Windows 10 and there is an increasing trend of users moving onto Windows 10 from Window 8.1 and earlier versions. As we continue to invest in expanding the capabilities of the extended edition mobile apps we plan to continue our support on modern operating systems like iOS, Android and Windows 10.
New capabilities are far easier to introduce and support on these new operating systems and keep all of our mobile capabilities in sync across the platforms.
NOTE: Windows 8.1 continues to be supported for browser based usage of SAP Cloud for Customer.
External links:
- https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2018/08/20/important-dates-regarding-apps-with-windows-phone-...
- https://support.microsoft.com/en-in/lifecycle/search?alpha=Windows%208.1
