UWP Failed … and Now Apple and Google are Copying It (Premium)

Microsoft's apps platform for Windows 10 is a failure. So why are Google and Apple both copying it?

It's an interesting question.

And the answer has its roots in the convoluted process by which each of the three big client platform makers---Apple, Google, and Microsoft---has brought apps and app stores to their respective operating systems.

Microsoft wasn't the first to integrate a store experience into a legacy desktop OS: Mac, Chrome OS, and various flavors of Linux have all included such a feature for years. But Microsoft's contribution is unique: It was the first to integrate a mobile apps platform and store into a legacy desktop OS, in Windows 8.

Since then, of course, the world has changed.

For indefensible reasons, Microsoft original had two mobile apps platforms, for Windows phone and "big" Windows, but they were belatedly merged with Windows 10. The result, the Universal Windows Platform (UWP), has failed by any measure. So Microsoft has been expanding its definition of a Store app to include desktop applications and web apps. (Most recently with Progressive Web Apps support in Windows 10 version 1803.)

Less famously, the app stores in both macOS and Chrome OS have also failed. Neither attracted strong support from developers or users, and that both are not mobile app stores is, I think, important.

But both firms have seen great success in mobile, and their respective store experiences, the App Store and the Google Play Store, are major revenue earners that each serve billions of customers. Why did their efforts to duplicate that success on the desktop fail?

The stores in each platform probably suffered from a number of unique issues but there's one major similarity, and I think it's key. With only a tiny fraction of the user base of their respective mobile platforms, these stores could never flourish. And simply bringing a good idea from mobile to the desktop wasn't enough. Also, and this is true on Windows PCs too, the audiences using macOS and Chrome OS simply aren't all that engaged compared to those on mobile devices. They are used to download apps from the web.

So, like Microsoft, both Apple and Google are resetting. They are both going in a new direction. In the same direction.

For its part, Apple is rumored to be bringing some subset of iOS apps---possibly just iPad apps---to the Mac. It can do this now because iOS is mature, and now it provides integrated productivity and multitasking features that work particularly well in big-screen apps that would be at home on a Mac. (We will find out more about this work, I think, at WWDC in June.)

Google is even further along: It has already integrated the Android apps platform and its Play Store into Chrome OS, so it's only a matter of time before we see the first true Chrome-based tablets. (The Pixelbook is a 2-in-1 and hints very strongly that this is coming.)

Put simply, both Apple and Google are taking a page from the Microsoft playbook. ...