Believe it or not, Windows Phone is BACK from the DEAD

Windows Phone is back. Well, sort of.

has started selling its Lumia-branded handsets in the Windows Store again.

The Redmond-based technology company removed all trace of its Lumia smartphone range from the official store last year.

It dropped a slew of handsets, including the Lumia 650 and the flagship Lumia 950.

The decision didn’t come as a surprise, since operating system.

Vice President of Operating Systems Joe Belfiore revealed the company had decided to halt development of new features and hardware for Windows 10 Mobile in October last year.

Belfoire broke the news in a series of tweets.

“Of course we’ll continue to support the platform.. bug fixes, security updates, etc,” Joe Belfiore tweeted. “But building new features/hw aren’t the focus.”

The Corporate Vice President even revealed he himself had switched away from Windows Phone to a rival mobile operating system.

“As an individual end-user, I switched platforms for the app/hw diversity. We will support those users too! Choose what’s best 4 u,” Belfiore tweeted.

Microsoft co-founder instead of a Windows Phone.

Although Microsoft has never explicitly stated its Windows Phone platform was dead, the writing has been on the wall for some time now.

The Redmond-based company gutted its smartphone business back in 2016, resulting in thousands of redundancies.

Microsoft ended support for its Windows Phone 8.1 platform the following year.

One of the biggest problems that Windows Phone faced was the lack of support from third-party developers.

Joe Belfiore addresses this in one of his tweets about the platform, writing: “We have tried VERY HARD to incent app devs.

“Paid money.. wrote apps 4 them.. but volume of users is too low for most companies to invest.”

As a result, it’s a little surprising to see Lumia Windows Phone return to the Microsoft Store.

The handsets are available in the US store, priced at Lumia 950 for $399, Lumia 950 XL for $499, Lumia 550 and Lumia 650 for $139 and $199, respectively.

It’s unclear how long these smartphone will be available from the Microsoft Store.