Microsoft Kills Word Flow, Will Focus on SwiftKey
Microsoft will finally consolidate its mobile keyboards into a single solution. Which will, of course, be SwiftKey.
“The Word Flow experiment is now complete!” the WordFlow website jauntily reveals. “We encourage you to download the SwiftKey Keyboard from the App Store. The SwiftKey product team is frequently building and evaluating new features for SwiftKey and shipping updates.”
Microsoft releases WordFlow for iOS only almost a year ago. It’s notable for two reasons: WordFlow is, of course, the name of the software keyboard that Microsoft first developed for Windows phone. And it offered a unique one-handed “Arc mode” that has roots all the way back to the Portable Media Center platform.
But killing WordFlow makes sense. The SwiftKey keyboard and brand are already well known and popular in the mobile space. Whereas WordFlow, like Windows phone, is not. And SwiftKey is truly cross-platform, not iOS-only.
Naturally, we’ll now pin our hopes on the unlikely chance that Microsoft will move some of the better WordFlow features, like Arc mode, to SwiftKey. I recommend not holding your breath on that one.