China’s most popular messaging service drops Windows Mobile

If WeChat was to be described, it would be WhatsApp meets Skype meets Snapchat meets your local banking app meets your local travel app meets Apple Pay meets every single app you’d need. It’s China’s equivalent of a master-app, and it does everything that you’d need, and it’s now leaving Windows Phone.

Windows Area reports that users signed into the app are now getting an error message, advising them to use iOS and Android and noting that Windows phone isn’t supported anymore. I was unable to sign in using my old account as well as create a new account on my Lumia 735 (the verification texts were never delivered), hence while WeChat still exists in the Windows phone store – you probably aren’t able to use it.

This isn’t anything remotely approaching a surprise though, Tencent earlier expressed disappointment with Microsoft’s treatment of Windows phone and noted that it would not be making an app for Windows 10 Mobile. The declining market share of Windows phone makes it more likely that more major app developers are thinking of when they’re dropping support for their apps rather than if.

Despite all this, WeChat has a UWP for Windows 10 available if Microsoft decides to get back in the mobile game as other tech journalists have speculated. Of course, if Microsoft wants to get back into mobile in any meaningful sense, it’ll need both China and the US. Without WeChat, at least one of those two just isn’t happening.