Microsoft has revealed it will soon be pulling the plug on its third-party keyboard app, SwiftKey.

ZDNet:

As of October 5, support for SwiftKey iOS will end and it will be delisted from the Apple App Store. Microsoft will continue support for SwiftKey Android as well as the underlying technology that powers the Windows touch keyboard. For those customers who have SwiftKey installed on iOS, it will continue to work until it is manually uninstalled or a user gets a new device. Please visit Support.SwiftKey.com for more information.

The writing has been on the wall for SwiftKey for iOS for sometime now. The app itself hasn’t been updated in more than a year, with the the addition of Emoji search back on August 11, 2021.

Meanwhile the Android app has continued to receive numerous updates, with the most recent just a fortnight ago on September 15.

With Microsoft refusing to comment further on the reasons behind the shutdown, we can only speculate for now. But it’s easy to see how iOS’ more closed system may have prevented the team from adding additional functionality that is permitted on Android, such as clipboard sync.