Rumor: Microsoft plans to phase out Microsoft Store for Business and Education

Microsoft plans to consider the Microsoft Store for Business and the Store for Education as deprecated by June 30, 2020. Microsoft would like to phase out the app stores this way. The future of the Store client in Windows 10 is said to be uncertain. This is reported by ZDNet sources.

The deadline for the stores’ deprecated status is before the end of Microsoft’s fiscal year, ZDNet’s usually well-informed Microsoft sources report. It is not clear whether users will receive a notification before that date that the stores are closing or that the closure must then be a fact.

Microsoft announced the Microsoft Store for Business and the Store for Education in 2015 to complement its Windows consumer app store. In the business and educational versions, developers could offer applications outside the consumer store, for example for volume distribution and supply within a certain organization.

Microsoft announced last year, also against ZDNet, that it is releasing the requirement that modern Windows apps must be distributed via the Windows Store. That was a requirement for Universal Windows Platform apps. Due to the focus on this platform, the gap between Win32 and UWP has become too large, the company admits. Now that UWP apps haven’t proved as popular as Microsoft expected, Microsoft is trying to focus on simply “Windows apps,” bringing more UWP features to Win32 software and easing restrictions on UWP apps.

The question then was what would happen to the Microsoft Store. According to ZDNet sources, the web version of the store for consumers is not up for discussion in the strategy, but the future of the Windows 10 integrated app store is “uncertain”. Microsoft wanted the store to provide a secure and central way to deliver Windows software, but last year announced that it considers the store just one of several channels for distribution of Windows apps.