In an announcement made on Thursday, software giant Microsoft said that it is discontinuing its effort codenamed Project Astoria --- the company's 'Windows Bridge for Android' tool to port Android apps to Windows 10 OS.

The Project Astoria tool was announced by Microsoft at its 2015 Build developers' conference. In introducing Project Astoria, Microsoft had said that the tool will essentially facilitate the conversion of Android apps into 'universal' Windows apps would run on all kinds of Windows devices.

In an attempt to enable developers create such apps, Microsoft had rolled out 'Windows Bridge for Android' in a limited developer preview. The company had said that it would make 'Windows Bridge for Android' available as a public beta last fall, but that did not happen.

In a Thursday announcement, Microsoft has now revealed that it will stop working on 'Windows Bridge for Android.' The company also added alongside that it plans to focus its efforts on the 'Windows Bridge for iOS' -- which was also announced at the 2016 Build conference -- and make it just the one Bridge option for bringing mobile code to all Windows 10-powered devices, including PCs and Xbox consoles.

About Microsoft's move to kill 'Windows Bridge for Android,' and concentrate on 'Windows Bridge for iOS,' Kevin Gallo - the company's director of program management for the Windows Developer Platform team for Windows 10 - said: "We received a lot of feedback that having two Bridge technologies to bring code from mobile operating systems to Windows was unnecessary, and the choice between them could be confusing."