Microsoft to discontinue Photosynth and several MSN apps including MSN Health & Fitness and MSN Travel for iOS, Android, and Windows in the coming months
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet :
Context & Ripple Effects
The shutdowns land mid-arc: ZDNet had already reported Microsoft phasing out support for Lumia camera-related apps on Windows Phone 8.1, and Skype Qik would follow within months with a hard cutoff date. Photosynth and the two MSN lifestyle apps are part of that same cull rather than isolated product failures.
What makes the health and travel titles notable is where their functions resurface — reporting on the Band hardware line describes Microsoft concentrating on its cross-platform Health service instead of device- or app-specific products, which frames these cuts as consolidation, not retreat.
First-order effects
- Users of MSN Health & Fitness and MSN Travel lose their cross-platform apps on iOS, Android, and Windows at once, so activity logs, goals, and saved trip content have nowhere native to live.
- Photosynth stops being available as a capture tool on any platform, ending its panorama workflow for existing users across all three ecosystems.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft's remaining consumer apps inherit a trust problem: each shutdown like the Groove Music app retirement teaches iOS and Android users not to invest data in Microsoft-branded software they don't control.
- Third-party health and travel apps become the default landing spot for displaced users, since the Band/Health reporting signals Microsoft wants services and hardware partners, not first-party lifestyle apps, to carry those workflows.
Third-order effects
- Across the Lumia camera apps, Skype Qik, Xbox Fitness, Band, and Groove, the pattern points to Microsoft exiting standalone consumer software wherever usage can't be tied to a paid service or cloud anchor — an ongoing portfolio prune rather than a single round of cuts.
The trend: Microsoft is systematically retiring niche consumer apps across platforms to concentrate engineering and brand equity on a small set of cloud-backed services.