Mobile applications have become big business in the last few years which has come largely because of the huge growth in the smartphone market. This has led to some applications becoming extremely popular with millions of users around the world on a variety of different platforms. It seems though that search engine giant Google should rethink its plans for Windows Phone applications.
On the day that Google Maps finally returns to the App Store for iOS and iPhone 5 users, V3 are reporting that the company has revealed it has no plans to provide dedicated applications for the new Windows Phone 8 platform or Windows 8.
The company is saying that its decision is based on the lack of interest from some of its business partners using the systems, so any development work on apps for the platform are currently on hold. Google’s Clay Bavor stated that the company are extremely “careful about where we invest and will go where the users are but they are not on Windows Phone or Windows 8”.
Google is instead focusing its efforts on improving its presence on the Android and iOS platforms by improving the offerings of the main applications it has on mobile hardware, and revealed that during 2013 it is set to make some large investments to create “beautiful mobile apps”.
It seems the company is looking to focus on its enterprise offerings as more people now own smartphones and tablets, and many of these users are now starting to use cloud systems. Google revealed that many companies it talks to are revealing that many people use up to five machines to access their data.
Having a good cloud structure is deemed important going forward by the company, but these can sometimes have some availability or reliability issues, which was seen earlier this week when both the Gmail and Google Drive services experienced some downtime for certain users. Bavor stated the company were embarrassed about the problems and had many people working to get the service fixed as quickly as possible.
The problems were found to be caused by a software update before being fixed by the company, but surely it would be better for Google to get its apps on as many mobile devices as possible? As we said earlier they have just released its Maps application on to the App Store even though Apple has its own offering available.
Do you think Google should develop applications for Windows Phone 8?