South Africa’s First National Bank (FNB) is contemplating unveiling its popular banking app only on Windows Phone 8, snubbing users of the Microsoft Windows Phone 7 OS.
The FNB banking app is currently available to iOS, Blackberry, Android and Symbian phones.
MyBroadBand, a South African blog, reports that the bank is looking to skip straight to the soon-to-be-released Windows Phone 8, in spite of previously having said it would be available on the earlier version.
The bank argues that this is because of Microsoft’s announcement earlier this year of the release of Windows Phone 8, making it clear that developers would have to choose either platform to develop for or release two separate apps in order to be able to take advantage of the more powerful features of Windows Phone 8.
“Our development life cycle always follows market and handset demand and we are optimistic at the prospects for Windows 8. However, no specific timeframe can be given at this stage,” MyBroadband quoted head of FNB Connect ISP and business operations Farren Roper as saying.
With Nokia’s financial troubles and the ailing sales of Lumia, which is Windows Phone 7 based, FNB is following the lead of other manufacturers who, like Samsung, have released or are looking at releasing Windows Phone 8 based phones.
