Developers are saving their resources and cutting the costs from supporting what will soon be an outdated and little-used version of Windows Phone.
With Windows 10 Mobile, it is a big reboot, and yes that's the fourth reboot in 4 major versions (6.x, 7, 8.x, 10), but this time developer focus will be worthwhile. I have faith that Windows 10 Mobile's app store will appear overflowing with apps compared to previous Windows Phone app stores, at least after a year or two. Why?
The article points out a big push: iOS and Android porting will be very easy for developers. So there may be an inundation with mediocre ported apps, but that is better than nothing for most users.
Add to this that instead of sharing some resources, now developers can create apps for all Windows 10 platforms with ease, only needing to offer specific scaling and additional features for other platforms if they desire any real success on multiple platforms.
Which, with the Universal Apps platform soon to be on the Xbox One, as well as on every Windows 10 desktop, laptop, and tablet, there's going to be a larger market for development than ever before.
Little was truly made of Windows 8's market, but, let's face it, it was too early, too segregated by device type, and desktop and laptop users still preferred desktop apps, leaving only a tiny slice of the market to actively search out store apps.
Now that Windows 10 makes the Universal Apps style more approachable due to an ability to scale windows and share screen space with other desktop applications, if the apps come, users will follow.
Just think of all the media apps, if they make them right. All the streaming services will have many users if they develop solid apps - why use the browser when you have high quality dedicated apps for video and music services.
And add in the fact that the media-heavy Xbox platform app development will now be done within the Universal Apps platform, those developers are going to be a major boon to the entire platform.
So, some apps are disappearing from the Windows Store at this time, but really, why bother supporting them any further? The people who search for your apps will be moving to Windows 10 Mobile, if not immediately, then eventually. Time to create apps for a new platform, this time one that [I feel comfortable in saying] is guaranteed to last.
The shared, multi-platform Windows 10 strategy is here to stay, and it is the only right course for Microsoft to chart at this time. It was always their goal, and they had hoped to achieve it with a Windows 8.x version, but I suspect it was a heck of a lot better to distance themselves from the Windows 8.x family to better present the unified Windows kernel and platform.