[joshuaissac]

Major Win32-only applications like Microsoft Office, SAP and countless in-house applications written over the last 25 years are the reason that many companies use Windows.

Microsoft understands that the Windows API "is so deeply embedded in the source code of many Windows apps that there is a huge switching cost to using a different operating system instead".[1] If they force companies to incur that cost by dropping Win32 support, that gives companies the chance to make their application cross-platform at a much smaller additional cost, and shed their reliance on Windows.

Windows licensing fees are still quite a large chunk of Microsoft's revenues, so I think that they will not make this move any time soon.

1. https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-wed-have-been-dead-a...