FEATURE ARTICLE (A0008):

Outlook express may be widely used for e-mail, but recently Microsoft has decided that it will not develop outlook express further.

The product development leader stated that outlook express will sit where it is, and the focus is development of hotmail and MSN, where client saturation is found. This is where investment and development work will be done by Microsoft.
While Outlook Express has always been most popular with individual consumers, many business users have also utilized it, in part because it is part of the default Windows install. Microsoft executives are hoping those users will now switch to the full-blown Outlook client (and pay for an Office license in the process).

The currently-in-beta Outlook 2003 client has much lower bandwidth requirements, he said. In May, Microsoft revealed that it was no longer planning to release standalone versions of Internet Explorer, which includes the Outlook Express functionality. Future releases will only be made available as part of the Windows platform.