Rumours started to swirl last month that Microsoft was killing off Project Astoria — its Windows Bridge for Android project which was aimed at helping developers port Android apps to Windows 10 devices. In an update on the Windows Blog, Kevin Gallo (VP Windows Development Platform at Microsoft), has stated that the company would be focusing its efforts on Windows Bridge for iOS, also known as Project Islandwood.
We also announced the Windows Bridge for Android (project “Astoria”) at Build last year, and some of you have asked about its status. 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.
In addition, Gallo commented on the acquisition of Xamarin which developers can utilize to “use a large percentage of their C# code to deliver a fully native mobile app experience for iOS and Android.” Gallo goes on to say that using Xamarin will make it easy to share common app code across the three mobile platforms — Windows, iOS, and Android — and still deliver fully-native experiences for users of each specific platform.
What do you think of Microsoft’s decision to drop Project Astoria? Let us know in the comments below, or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.
[button link=”https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/02/25/an-update-on-the-developer-opportunity-and-windows-10/” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: Windows Blog[/button]
