Microsoft to STOP app submission to Microsoft Store for Windows/Windows Phone 8.x

Recently in an official blog post, Microsoft announced that they are soon going to stop accepting new apps and app updates for Windows 8.x and Windows Phone 8.x or earlier. If you have built app packages for these platform, its time to port those to UWP.

Here's the important dates, announced by Microsoft, for the apps with Windows 8.x and Windows Phone 8.x packages submitted to Microsoft Store.

• As the first stage, on 31st October 2018, Microsoft will stop accepting new app submissions for Windows 8.x and Windows Phone 8.x, having XAP or APPX packages. But the existing apps with packages targeting Windows 8.x and Windows Phone 8.x will continue receiving updates as mentioned below.
  
  
• As the second stage, on 1st July 2019, Microsoft will stop distributing app updates to Windows Phone 8.x and earlier devices. After this date, you will still be able to publish updates to all those apps but those updates will only be available to Windows 10 mobile devices.
  
  
• As the third stage, on 1st July 2023, Microsoft will stop distributing app updates to Windows 8.x devices. After this date, though you will still be able to publish updates to all those apps, but that will be available only to Windows 10 devices.
  
  

If you have built any app in past for Windows 8.x and/or Windows Phone 8.x, its definitely a time to port those apps to Universal Windows Platform (UWP) as that will give you better hardware support, greater monetization opportunities, a modern API set, adaptive UI controls and a range of input modalities including mouse/keyboard, touch and speech.