Microsoft has revealed it will soon revoke support for versions of collaboration platform Teams running on older Android builds.
In a post to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, the company set out timelines for the retirement of Microsoft Teams on Android versions 5, 6 and 7.
Support will be pulled for Teams on Android 5 on March 1, 2021, while Android 6 and 7 will retain support until July 1 and September 1, respectively.
After these dates, Microsoft says it will not provide “active development and bug fixes”, but the most recent supported versions will be available via the Play Store for two months after each retirement date has passed.
Microsoft Teams on Android
While the vast majority of Android users are running newer versions of the mobile OS and will be unaffected by the changes, many millions will still be caught up.
According to the latest data from StatCounter, 11.69% of Android users are currently running either Android 5, 6 or 7. Earlier this year, meanwhile, Google announced there are more than three billion active Android devices worldwide.
A crude calculation would suggest that roughly 360 million Android devices will therefore no longer have access to a supported version of the Teams client by the end of next year, when the sunsetting process comes to a close.
Admittedly, a portion of affected users will have upgraded to a newer device by that time and most businesses provide employees with smartphones and tablets running newer versions of Android anyway, for security reasons. However, this still leaves a large pool of potential Teams users without access to the video conferencing and collaboration service on mobile.
Although Microsoft was able to confirm the veracity of the reported timelines, the company declined to provide TechRadar Pro with any specific insight into the motivations behind the decision to pull support from older Android devices.
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