If you’re a Windows phone user, you certainly know that the platform is going through some difficult times these days, as Microsoft remains completely tight-lipped on its mobile efforts, rumor has it that the Lumia brand is dead, and more app developers are leaving to focus on Android and iOS.
ESPN, which is one of the companies that invested in Windows apps from the launch of Windows 8 in October 2012, has pulled its Fantasy Football app from the Windows Phone store, leaving users with no option if they want to access their teams, other than pointing their browsers to the official website.
In emails sent to users, ESPN says the app stops working on September 21, but provides no reasons for its decision to leave Windows Phone.
“Dear Windows Phone user, effective September 21, 2016, we are discontinuing support for the ESPN Fantasy Football app on Windows phones. You can still access your fantasy football teams and ESPN’s fantasy football content on your Windows 10 device or on your computer by navigating to www.espn.com/fantasyfootball. We apologize for the inconvenience,” the message reads.
ESPN app also working incorrectly
As some reddit users noted, this decision only affects the Fantasy Football app, but at the same time, it turns out that the ESPN app is also working incorrectly, most likely because of bugs. There’s still no mention regarding ESPN’s plans for the official apps, but the rendering problems are most likely caused by a bug and not by the company’s decision to leave the platform.
ESPN is just one of the several big names that have decided to jump ship lately, as both Amazon and PayPal abandoned Windows Phone in order to focus more on iOS and Android. The reason behind all this is the dropping market share of Windows Phone, with various sources pointing to a share of below 1 percent for Microsoft’s mobile platform.
Some of the devs eventually return to Windows phones with universal apps, as is the case of Amazon, but sometimes these apps are actually useless because they’re essentially web wrappers that do nothing more than the website.
