Comment by shortrounddev2
2 months ago
Well they did do something like that; Windows Phone apps were written in the same .Net UWP SDK as desktop apps, so the idea was that you could target both platforms at once (and Xbox as well). I think MS overestimated how much people cared about native PC apps by that point (basically not at all). Additionally, snapchat was the hot new app at the time, and there was no first party Snapchat app (and if you used the 3rd party one, you risked being banned from snapchat).
The Lumia remains my favorite phone of all time
I would argue that windows desktop development using .net is a walled garden in itself as well.
They finally realized what I was saying when they acquired Xamarin in 2016. I never used Xamarin myself, but I hear it is not that great and kinda dying. So like I said the native open platform approach was a lot harder to pull off.