Microsoft has been making efforts to move its users from the Outlook.com client to a new Outlook.com email client but it seems the move has not been gaining traction as the company expected. The company first started the initiative back in May 2015.
The company’s plan was to make it’s users shift by the end of August 31, 2016. However when called for a comment on the issue of migrating it’s customers to the new Outlook.com mail client, one Microsoft spokesperson said that the company was still looking at upgrading a vast majority of the email accounts by the end of summer. The comment was made on the 15th of August, which meant Microsoft could have made that goal.
However, something might have happened in the days after that, because it now seems as if Microsoft will not be able to keep up with their projections after all. One Outlook.com user still using the old client said that they received a notification which indicated that the new Outlook upgrade will be done in 2017. The message noted that the new Outlook.com would be made available in the first half of the year 2017.
The tech giant was planning on making its Outlook.com more like its Outlook mail client and announced the decision back in May 2015. At the time, the tech giant said that a preview of the new Outlook mail client would be available at first for a small group of its customers, and then they would expand the program for every user after that by broadening the preview in the coming weeks.
The move to make the Outlook.com to look kore like the Outlook client was described as a vital move by the company’s executives. They said the move would help the Outlook.com by bringing in new options for the service. New products and functions such as the support for ‘Clutter’ for de-cluttering the inboxes would be made available. Other functions which would be made available included, mail themes, auto link preview generation, the pop-out read and compose windows. The new update would also include add-ins such as the Paypal, Uber, Maps and many more options. Another feature which would be accessible thanks to the update would be the suggested contacts feature and the automated flight notifications.
However, Microsoft officials also announced earlier this year in April that the company’s initial aim seemed to be overly-ambitious. As of then, the company had only migrated around 175 million Outlook accounts from a total of close to 400 million accounts. The old Outlook.com has been working on a legacy infrastructure and the new update would be facilitated by the same options such as those that work on the Office 365. Therefore, new options can be introduced onto the Outlook and Office products without much hard work needed.
