Microsoft kills its Android-to-Windows “Astoria” tool

Basically, Microsoft says in that blog entry, the developers for whom Project Astoria was intended found it to be an unnecessary addition to the Project Islandwood tool for iPhone apps.

Microsoft, which lags far behind mobile-operating-system rivals Google and Apple, has turned to acquisitions in its bid to stay relevant among mobile app developers and users.

Microsoft and Xamarin have worked closely together since a global partnership was announced in 2013 to make it more simple for mobile developers to build native apps on platforms in Visual Studio.

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. Gallo also suggested that developers that spent time on the Android program should instead take a look at Project Islandwood.

We haven’t heard much from Project Astoria recently, but now it seems like the app-porting initiative has breathed its last.

“At Build previous year, we unveiled our Bridges strategy and our commitment to provide developers with tools to accelerate bringing their apps to Windows 10 devices”. Although Astoria was released as a limited beta, it appears that this has been axed by Microsoft, although Islandwood is still moving forward and is now in preview form on GitHub. Microsoft (MSFT -0.1%) is continuing its mobile M&A spree by acquiring Xamarin for an undisclosed sum.

It is reported that Microsoft company is going to purchase Xamarin.Xamarin is a mobile application developer company which develops various mobile apps for more than one platform.

Microsoft partnered with Xamarin in November and had been working with them to offer a cross-platform development tool that would take advantage offer.NET framework. Statistics show that there were only 340, 000 apps available for Windows phone as in July 2015.

It was formed by Miguel de Icaza in 2011 after his earlier Mono-focused company, Ximian, was acquired by Novell but then the Mono developers were let go when Novell was acquired by Attachmate.