Is the Microsoft Store on the Way Out? (Premium)

While I don’t expect to hear much about Windows 10 at Build next week, several related topics are top of mind, at least for me. Key among them is the Microsoft Store and the evolving definition of Store apps. Is the Microsoft Store on the way out?

I think it may be game over for Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps platform. And while this doesn’t necessarily mean that the Microsoft Store goes away completely, I do think it means that it will be further diminished by the changes and will be even less important in the future.

Which is saying something: Despite years of improvements, the Microsoft Store is still a wasteland compared to other stores, including not just the mobile stores on Android and iOS but also various games stores like Steam. There’s just no there-there, so to speak, no compelling reason for Windows users to spend time idly browsing through its content.

I’ve written and spoken a lot about this issue in the past, of course, and have noted what Microsoft lacks is the engaged audience we see on other platforms. It has tried to address this problem by adding new kinds of content—like the ill-fated ebook store that was killed within two years—and by continually evolving the definition of Store app to include many other types of “packaged” apps from the desktop, web, and elsewhere.

Those efforts have been partially successful in that there are some high-quality apps and games in the Store now. But virtually none of them are pure UWP apps, the evolution of the mobile apps platform that started with Windows 8 and has struggled ever since. Today, the best apps and games in the Store are all packaged versions of non-UWP apps, like desktop applications (iTunes, Spotify, Photoshop Elements) and web apps (Twitter). Most of which can be acquired elsewhere.

Which is the problem. With more and more Windows users turning to the web to fulfill their application needs, a Microsoft Store in Windows is simply unnecessary, it’s just another icon in the taskbar or Start menu to ignore. Microsoft brought Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) to the Store a year ago, supposedly, though we continue to highlight the same small handful of PWAs now that we did then. Most users simply access the same web apps through their web browsers.

This reality is a big part of the reason Microsoft is switching its Edge web browser to the Chromium code base, of course. Google Chrome, which is based on Chromium, offers a sophisticated way to install web apps to the desktop and then use them as if they were native apps, and this system works across Windows, Mac, and Chrome OS now. You can even install non-PWA web pages and use them in a similar manner, though you will not be able to use PWA-specific features like offline support.

The new Edge offers this functionality as well, of course, and I described it as “inarguably this browser’s single most important feature.” And the Canary (nightly) version of the new Edge this week was updated to pin installed web apps right in the Start menu, alphabetically, alongside your other installed apps. This makes the feature even more sophisticated, makes those installed web apps seem even more normal and native.

This feature also further diminishes the role of the Microsoft Store.

But it’s not just web apps that have me thinking about the Store and UWP apps. There are other indications that Microsoft is moving past these once-promising platform features.

As you may have seen, Windows 10 version 1903 allows users to uninstall far more of the built-in UWP apps that ship with Windows 10. In previous versions, most built-in apps could not be uninstalled, and it’s fair to say that few of these apps received major updates in this release either. Some built-in apps have simply sat virtually unchanged for years.

The Microsoft Store, as noted, has been shedding content types, and I think that will continue. We lost the Music storefront when Groove Music Pass went down, and we lost the Books store recently when Microsoft killed its silly ebook initiative. The Edge Extension section should pass, too, since those are handled right in the browser, just like in Chrome, as God intended. All we’re really left with are Apps and Games. And as noted, no one is browsing the Store for that content anyway.

But the biggest change that will impact the Store and UWP is one that Microsoft should directly address at Build next week, but most likely won’t: Developers have rejected UWP for a variety of reasons that include the impossibility of rebuilding existing apps using a new apps platform and the infeasibility of creating new apps that only run on one version of Windows. And so Microsoft began the process of expanding the definition of Store apps to included desktop, web, and mobile apps that are packaged to run in Windows 10 and look and work much like native Store apps. Even though they aren’t.

Last year, however, it took a much bigger step and announced that it would bring many—and then all—UWP capabilities back to once-deprecated desktop development environments like .NET, Windows Presentation Foundation, and WinForms, allowing developers to continue using the technologies they prefer and target a wider audience. And this week, ahead of Build, the firm has begun discussing how developers can essentially take anything from the UWP world and use it directly on the Windows desktop. And most tellingly, do so from outside of the Store.

That is a sea change. And without getting into the nitty-gritty of the developer-based technologies that are enabling this final dissociation from the Store, I will at least point to a few Microsoft blog posts from this week that dance around the changes.

In Calling Windows 10 APIs From a Desktop Application just got easier, Microsoft explains how developers can much more easily use Windows 10 UWP features like Geolocation, Windows AI, Machine Learning, and much more from their desktop applications. This was possible before, but it required some jumping through hoops.

In Enhancing Non-packaged Desktop Apps using Windows Runtime Components, Microsoft explains how the latest version of Windows 10 adds support for “non-packaged desktop apps that make use of user-defined (3^rd-party) Windows Runtime (WinRT) Components.” “Non-packaged apps” refers to “non-Store apps,” or traditionally-created desktop applications.

“Registration-free WinRT enables you to access more features in the UWP ecosystem by allowing you to use Windows Runtime Components without the requirement to package your application,” the firm notes. “This makes it easier for you to keep your existing Win32 code investments and enhance your applications by additively taking advantage of modern Windows 10 features.”

Put simply, Microsoft is moving to open its previously sheltered UWP/modern Windows 10 capabilities to all developers, including those that understandably wish to ignore the lackluster Microsoft Store. And new APIs, like Windows Vision Skills, now in preview, will likewise be open from the get-go, and support all “Windows applications (.NET, Win32, and UWP).”

Microsoft’s positioning is understandable: The changes make Windows 10 features more accessible to developers. But what’s left out is that these things were previously only available to UWP or were easier to use in UWP. And now UWP is essentially being deprecated. It’s no longer the focus.

If you search for “UWP” in the incomplete Build session list that’s now available, you can find examples of sessions that seem to be about “pure” UWP apps, which run across Windows 10 PCs, Xbox, HoloLens, Surface Hub, and IoT devices. But you will also see sessions about “UWP and Windows Desktop” and the like. In State of the Union: The Windows Presentation Platform, for example, you can learn how Microsoft is “evolving the Windows platform by enabling consistent desktop UI/UX across UWP, Win32, and .NET.” Which do you think is more relevant to Microsoft’s developer base?

From what I can see, the future of native apps on Windows has very little to do with the Microsoft Store.  That said, I don’t expect the Store to disappear. I do very much expect for UWP to disappear, however, especially on the Windows desktop. And for Microsoft Store to continue to be irrelevant to most users, and to most developers.