Microsoft is Shutting Down Some MSN Mobile Apps

As you may know, Microsoft makes a wonderful collection of MSN content apps—News, Weather, Sports, Money, Health & Fitness, Food & Drink and Travel—for Windows, Windows Phone, Android and iOS. As of this fall, sadly, three of those apps are being discontinued.

More specifically, MSN Food & Drink, Health & Fitness, and Travel are being discontinued.

Note: This change does not impact the Microsoft Health app, which works with Microsoft Band. MSN Health & Fitness is a content app, and separate from Microsoft Health.

“We regularly evaluate our business to ensure we’re focused on the areas where our users find the most value,” a Microsoft spokesperson said. “We will continue to support those apps with broad consumer appeal including News, Weather, Sports and Money, which will be made available as apps on Windows 10 and will remain cross platform.”

It appears that the discontinued apps simply weren’t being used by enough people to justify updating them, though oddly enough all of these apps—including the ones that will be discontinued—were recently updated from Modern apps to universal apps in Windows 10.

Oddly, the apps are being discontinued on a very specific schedule:

MSN Food & Drink for Windows, Windows Phone, Android and iOS will be discontinued on September 28, 2015.

MSN Health & Fitness for Windows, Windows Phone, Android and iOS will be discontinued on November 1, 2015.

MSN Travel for Windows, Windows Phone, Android and iOS app will be discontinued on September 28, 2015.

Neowin’s Brad Sams reports that Microsoft’s Photosynth app is also being discontinued.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to the Photosynth announcement. “We are retiring the Photosynth mobile apps … because the new Photosynth Preview technology and its cloud processing is a more immersive way to capture a place than the spherical panoramas that our apps produce.”