Microsoft moves ahead with plans to shut down standalone Sunrise calendar app

Microsoft is entering the next phase of its planned shutdown of its standalone Sunrise calendar app.

In "the next few days," Microsoft will be removing the Sunrise calendar app from the Apple and Google Play stores where it has been available, said company representatives in a May 11 blog post. And as of August 31, 2016, Microsoft will "officially shut down the app and it will stop working all together."

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Microsoft announced in October that it planned to integrate the Sunrise calendar technology that it bought in February 2015 with its redesigned Outlook mobile apps for iOS and Android. The Outlook Mobile apps are built on the Acompli codebase that Microsoft bought when it acquired Acompli in December 2014.

In October last year, Microsoft officials said they planned to replace the standalone Sunrise app with the Outlook Mobile apps that would include built-in calendar functionality. At that time, Microsoft execs said they planned to leave Sunrise in market until all of its features were fully integrated into Outlook.

The end of August timing for the elimination of the standalone Sunrise app lines up with the planned timing for Microsoft's completion of its ongoing migration of Outlook.com users to the new Outlook.com infrastructure and interface.