Microsoft is planning to shut down its Sunrise Calendar app from August 31. (Photo : YouTube/ J A Bailey)
Microsoft acquired the Sunrise Calendar app in 2015, but now plans to shut it down on August 31 and discontinue supporting it. Hence, the Sunrise team of the company will work on Microsoft's Outlook app.
The Redmond tech titan will also remove the Sunrise app from its app stores "in the next few days," a blog post by the Sunrise team stated. Subsequently, users will not be able to download the Sunrise Calendar app any more.
Microsoft acquired Sunrise during an acquisition spree and mobile overhaul. Before acquiring this startup app, the company also bought the email app Acompli, in addition to rolling out Outlook for Android and iOS.
Last year, the technology giant assured user that it will continue to support the Sunrise Calendar app. At that time, executives at Sunrise even said that there was no reason to worry as the company was "not going anywhere."
In fact, by October 2015, Microsoft reported in October last year that almost 30 million people were actively using the app on smartphones and tablets. It further claimed that at least one in five of these users were connecting to multiple accounts, Fortune reported.
However, with the rapid growth of the Outlook app soon after its debut in January 2015, Microsoft started merging some of Sunrise's features into the email service. Eventually, the company announced in October that it planned to shut down the Sunrise app when its entire features were integrated with Outlook.
As employees from both Acompli as well as Sunrise were working with the Outlook team, the Android and iOS mobile apps began to undergo delicate, but perceptible design changes. The changes included accessing key features like email, people, calendar and files on the mobile app's front page more easily.
Now, the entire Sunrise team is completely committed to Microsoft's Outlook mobile apps. Though the team behind the Sunrise Calendar app has admitted the opportunity of working on an important app like Outlook, it pointed out that it is unable to continue deliver new features and fixes for Sunrise users to keep the app going forward.
In the company's blog, the Sunrise team has acknowledged that it is unfortunate that like all good stories go, there is something sad about shutting down the Sunrise app, as they are unable to support and update it anymore.
Watch an overview of the Sunrise Calendar app below:
