The Great Windows Phone App Exodus of 2016

Windows phone fans have suffered countless indignities in the year since Microsoft surrendered the smartphone market to Android and iPhone. But none are as hard to bear as the growing exodus of apps from the platform.

It's been a tough year for Windows phone fans, obviously.

If you're looking for the exact time of death, you can mark the calendar: On July 8, 2015, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella emailed his employees and told them that he was "fundamentally restructuring" Microsoft's phone business. The import of this announcement was immediately clear: Microsoft had ceded the smartphone market and would only offer a handful of new phones in the short term---which it later did with the mostly lackluster Lumia 550, 650, 950 and 950 XL models---and then "generate opportunity" for third party hardware makers, like HP with its Elite x3. Part of this strategy is finding niche markets---like the productivity possibilities offered by Continuum---while looking to the future and as-yet-unknown coming mobile markets.

Look, platforms die. But more often they fade into obscurity, or change so dramatically that you almost don't even recognize them on the other side. Palm's amazing webOS could have changed the world but didn't in the wake of the iPhone, but it's still around as a platform for smart TVs. And today, Blackberry is making a futile last run at the smartphone market with Android-based handsets. But it's more likely that its QNX platform will continue to see success in automotive/rail, medical, industrial and other vertical markets instead.

As for Windows phone ... we'll see. I noted in Rethinking Windows Phone (also Premium only) that the current rendition of the Windows phone platform, called Windows 10 Mobile, is positioned as a very mobile way to run Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps, essentially a more modern take on Windows RT. And while it will never see the retail sales success of Android or iPhone, it could still do pretty well as a locked-down PC-like terminal for businesses.

None of this helps Windows phone fans, whom I hear from every day, literally, via email and Twitter. With a mixture of obstinate independence bordering on the delusional (sorry), many of these people simply refuse to leave the sinking ship. The reasons are many, but often boil down to something that is more emotional than pragmatic: They simply prefer Windows phone, especially its more usable user experience---the Start screen with live tiles, for the most part---which they deem more important to, say, having apps.

To be clear, the Windows phone user experience is superior to that of Android or iOS. But this clearly matters little to the general public, who by choice or ignorance seem to have little issue with the "whack-a-mole" grid of app icons found on the dominant smartphone platforms. What matters to them---pragmatically, not emotionally---is apps. On Android and iPhone, you never need to worry about apps.

But I've heard---ag...