Windows 10 Mobile
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Windows 10 Mobile

Windows 10 Mobile is the fourth and final generation of Microsoft's Windows Phone mobile operating system, succeeding Windows Phone 8.1. First released in 2015, it was marketed by Microsoft as being an edition of its PC counterpart, Windows 10.

Windows 10 Mobile aimed to provide greater consistency with its counterpart for PCs, including more extensive synchronization of content, Universal Windows Platform apps, as well as the capability, on supported hardware, to connect devices to an external display and use a desktop interface with mouse and keyboard input support (reminiscent of Windows on PCs). Microsoft built tools for developers to port iOS Objective-C apps with minimal modifications. Windows Phone 8.1 smartphones are eligible for upgrade to Windows 10 Mobile, pursuant to manufacturer and carrier support. Some features vary depending on hardware compatibility.

Windows 10 Mobile was designed for use on smartphones and phablets running on 32-bit ARM processor architectures. Microsoft also intended for the platform to be used on ARM tablets with screens 9 inches or smaller in size, but such devices were rarely commercially released. Windows 10 Mobile entered public beta for selected Lumia smartphones on February 12, 2015. The first Lumia smartphones powered by Windows 10 Mobile were released on November 20, 2015, while eligible Windows Phone devices began receiving updates to Windows 10 Mobile on March 17, 2016, pursuant to manufacturer and carrier support.

The platform never achieved any significant degree of popularity or market share in comparison to Android or iOS. By 2017, Microsoft had already begun to downplay Windows 10 Mobile, having discontinued active development (beyond maintenance releases) due to a lack of user and developer interest in the platform, and focused on serving incumbent mobile operating systems as part of its software and services strategy. Support for Windows 10 Mobile ended on January 14, 2020. As of November 2021, Windows 10 Mobile had approximately a 0.01% share of the mobile operating system market.

Microsoft had already begun the process of unifying the Windows platform across device classes in 2012; Windows Phone 8 dropped the Windows CE-based architecture of its predecessor, Windows Phone 7, for a platform built upon the NT kernel that shared much of the same architecture with its PC counterpart Windows 8 including file system (NTFS), networking stack, security elements, graphics engine (DirectX), device driver framework and hardware abstraction layer. At Build 2014, Microsoft also unveiled the concept of Universal Windows Apps. With the addition of Windows Runtime support to these platforms, apps created for Windows 8.1 could now be ported to Windows Phone 8.1 and Xbox One while sharing a common codebase with their PC counterparts. User data and licenses for an app could also be shared between multiple platforms.

In July 2014, Microsoft's then-new CEO Satya Nadella explained that the company was planning to "streamline the next version of Windows from three operating systems into one single converged operating system for screens of all sizes", unifying Windows, Windows Phone, and Windows Embedded around a common architecture and a unified application ecosystem. However, Nadella stated that these internal changes would not have any effect on how the operating systems are marketed and sold.

On September 30, 2014, Microsoft unveiled Windows 10; Terry Myerson explained that Windows 10 would be Microsoft's "most comprehensive platform ever", promoting plans to provide a "unified" platform for desktop computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and all-in-one devices. Windows 10 on phones was publicly unveiled during the Windows 10: The Next Chapter press event on January 21, 2015; unlike previous Windows Phone versions, it would also expand the platform's focus to small, ARM-based tablets. Microsoft's previous attempt at an operating system for ARM-based tablets, Windows RT (which was based upon the PC version of Windows 8), was commercially unsuccessful.

During the 2015 Build keynote, Microsoft announced the middleware toolkit "Islandwood", later known as Windows Bridge for iOS, which provides a toolchain that can assist developers in porting Objective-C software (primarily iOS projects) to build as Universal Windows Apps. An early build of Windows Bridge for iOS was released as open-source software under the MIT License on August 6, 2015. Visual Studio 2015 can also convert Xcode projects into Visual Studio projects. Microsoft also announced plans for a toolkit codenamed "Centennial", which would allow desktop Windows software using Win32 APIs to be ported to Windows 10 Mobile.

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