AfterDawn: News

Report: Microsoft to allow Android apps to run on Windows 10 tablets, phones

According to the well-connected Paul Thurrott, Microsoft will announce this week that Windows 10 phone and tablet users will be able to run Android apps on their devices.

The announcement comes on the heels of the company's BUILD conference aimed at developers.



While the move is a huge win for consumers who would like to have access to great native apps, Microsoft appears to be quitting on Windows Phone if the report is accurate.

Thurrott says: "When it comes time to upgrade, why would anyone choose a Windows Phone at that point? (A problem exacerbated by Microsoft's focus on low-end Windows Phone handsets.) Instead, most will simply choose Android, since they are now comfortable with those apps, and for the many advantages that Android has over Windows Phone generally." I agree.

In addition, "For developers who have invested a lifetime of learning and mastering Microsoft's platforms, Android compatibility is a slap in the face. This sends the message that they have wasted their time and that it's time to move on to a more successful platform since, after all, the apps you create for Android will now work on Android and Windows/Windows Phone."

It will be interesting to see whether Microsoft will indeed make this shocking announcement, officially.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 29 Apr 2015 0:30

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• 7 comments

• Bozobub

  I agree in more than one way with this article. First off, it's great news for existing owners of Windows phone and tablet customers - more choice is always good - and may bode ill for the entire Windows mobile ecosystem, unless M$ plans to continue to stake out the cheap phone market =p .
  But what REALLY chaps my tukhus, is that M$ basically ruined Windows for PCs, trying to match a platform they are quite possibly pulling away from! ARRRRRGH! *gnashes teeth*
  If I never see another ugly-@$$ "live tile", I cannot be more happy.

  29.4.2015 16:14 #1

• bw5011

  I Love live tiles! One of the best features on ANY platform. I can't believe people rather stare at that cartoonish crap instead. Live tiles are actually useful without even opening the app at times....
  

  29.4.2015 22:22 #2

• Bozobub

  You're calling anything but live tiles "cartoonish crap"..? I think you're badly mistaken.
  
  First off, M$ forced a full-screen display of these tiles in their ugly, bordering-on-useless "Start Screen", replacing a reasonably efficient alternative (the older Start Menu) with inefficient crap. The only reason this decision was made, was to FORCE people into their new paradigm, and it patently did not work. There's a reason the Start menu refuses to die, you know.
  
  Everything built into "live tiles" can be done with icons and/or widgets on the desktop. Everything. And guess what? I don't have a single widget on my desktop, either!
  Furthermore, M$'s redesign forces a complete sea-change into how you use the OS, ad that's simply not OK to people who don't want to waste time relearning how to get stuff done, or pay for others to do so. Windows 8/8.1 (and now 10) has nearly zero market penetration in the business world, and M$ did that to themelves.
  
  The tile-based design works reasonably well for a hand-held touch display. For a laptop - or even worse, a desktop - not so well. Nd what about those who simply don't have (or, for that matter, want) a touch-enabled monitor? Try googling "gorilla arm".

  30.4.2015 12:20 #3

• bw5011

  Seriously, you sound like someone that didn't want to see the end of life for XP. The start screen works and looks great and has plenty of use. A lot of people are into computing from their tablet and also touchscreen laptops which they will find it easier to use the start screen than desktop mode. The reason they had to reiterate old designs is because they tried to force the lazy public to learn something new. I admit that was a mistake, it was too much too soon for many because they were stuck on XP. If Apple releases the same thing in 2 year people will say it is the best thing ever. It would be sort of like they praised the Casio watch with the apple sticker on it.
  I agree it was a pain using 8 with a desktop but there were plenty of improvements with 8.1 and desktop mode. Please tell me how to make a widget or icon perform as the People Live Tile works. I'll wait!
  Windows 10 will have plenty of market penetration in the business world. If you work in the field you know that no shop upgrades instantly to the latest thing out. Windows 7 is a great OS just like XP was and people moved to that and was comfortable with it. There was really no need to upgrade to Windows 8 unless you were still on XP and you wanted to take a blind leap of faith. I use Server 2012 R2 everyday as well as 2003 (yikes). Talk to me in 2 years and you will see how much penetration Windows 10 has in the market place. It will surpass all flavors of Chrome and Apple in the first 6 months.
  
  

  30.4.2015 16:57 #4

• Bozobub

  Seriously, you sound like an M$ fanboi =) . Isn't it interesting, how easy (and useless) that type of comment is? No, I don't use XP - and dropped it quickly, once Win7 became a more polished product - but M$ still has NOT come up with a compelling reason to "upgrade" for me yet to 8/8.1/10. Notice, I made no concrete statements about your preferences..? If 8/8.1/10 is better for YOU, more power to you! But trying to project that preference to the world at large simply will not work.
  
  As for "into computing from a tablet" (or laptop), I explicitly mentioned that touchscreens were a better idea in that case, although not so much for laptops; quite a few people, in fact, agree with me, as a simple Google search will verify. Again, you are mistaking YOUR preference for something universal. Nor are the majority of Windows users doing so on a tablet.
  
  The reason M$ "reiterates" old design is because the old design works, and and often provably better than than the tile-based silliness (or many other supposedly hot-snot changes). Furthermore, their customers DEMAND continuity of the product. It is not M$'s job to tell those customers that what they want is "wrong". Yes, many studies have been performed on exactly this, and once more, Google is your friend.
  
  As for significant business market penetration for 10, no, that's NOT likely to happen, as many businesses (both large and small) have already declared. The main thing that might force business adoption of Win10 is M$'s sunsetting Windows Server support, a move that is very similar to (and probably as ineffective as) M$ trying to force adoption of Vista with DirectX 10. There's a couple of very good reasons for this that I can recite off the top o my head:
  - Windows 7 still works just fine; few companies wish to pay to upgrade. Software costs AND personnel retraining costs are a a rather big deal.
  - M$ changed the entire development process for Windows software. Many small-to-midsize companies simply cannot afford to make drastic changes to their workflow, merely to be certified for the "Windows Store", and many larger corporations simply don't care to. The costs to do so snowball with direct retraining costs. That has not changed with Win10.
  
  Change, just for change's sake, is not necessarily a good thing, and quite often is a negative, especially in the business world. Similarly, "updates" to a given piece of software are often not improvements; uTorrent is another perfect example of this. This goes triple for changes to the GUI in a GUI-driven OS! And yes, many of these changes have been quite obviously badly executed and/or poorly researched. I'll also note your claims for business market penetration are exactly equivalent to similar claims in the past for Vista and 8/8.1. You certainly may end up being correct, but both recent history and current events don't particularly seem to favor that outcome; you can stop trying to pretend you're "Winstradamus" =) .

  1.5.2015 11:20 #5

• bw5011

  Still waiting! Widgets, Icons, remember!
  
  Ok, I recommended to all my business clients to stay with Windows 7 and not to upgrade to Windows 8 or 8.1. I never said or believe that it would grab a large market share because it was something new. Even more drastic than Vista, which I think was an OS that was used as a tech preview for the public. I think you said that and I believe I agreed as well. But you act like it is useless. Windows 10 is different, have you even used it yet!
  
  "But trying to project that preference to the world at large simply will not work." That is what you were doing. Your preference is not law and your Google found study isn’t either. As you know we can both find studies to back up both of our claims and spin it either way.
  
  I don’t have time to write a book, I will just say this. The world changes, technology changes and the people that don’t change with it will just get left behind. Windows 10 is the Windows 7 to Vista. I understand that you probably love Google, Apple, Linux or whatever and wish they would put out something as compelling as Microsoft but they haven’t. Chromebooks are good for nursing homes attendants to surf, MAC stuff is ok if you like that type of limited OS and Linux, well let’s just say will never be a widely adapted OS amongst the general public. (I have a few Linux VM’s myself)
  
  I guess you can say I am a Microsoft fan. I have a Surface, by far the best tablet on the market and I use Bing like 1 out of 5 people, and 1 out of 3 if you count Yahoo’s, Bing powered (probably until October)search engine. I walked away from UNIX to come back to the Windows world.
  Thanks for the "Winstradamus" comment, I needed that, good one!
  
  *the edit was to seperate the paragraphs, it was looking like MAC OS.*
  

  1.5.2015 13:19 #6

• Bozobub

  Considering I stated my preference was MY PREFERENCE, sorry, no, you fail. Everything I said in a general case about 8/8.1/10 is easily supported by external data, and I can and WILL drown you in links, if I really must. I'd really rather stay lazy, but whatever *shrug*. Nor did I even remotely imply that it was universally held opinion, although evidence directly supports my belief that it's pretty damn widespread *points at dismal 8/8.1 adoption rates, just for starters*
  
  I place you solidly in the camp of people who automatically think newer is better. That is demonstrably oftn NOT the case, and you simply will not be able to argue otherwise successfully.
  
  Yes, many of the changes made "under the hood" in 8/8.1/10 were (and still are) badly needed, or at least incrementally better than previous iterations. But it still remains, the part that faces the public (the "graphic" part of "GUI") is not particularly well-loved, as the numbers go. The main reason 8/8.1, for example, has ANY market penetration at all, is simply that new PCs come with it, by default, no more, no less. Furthermore, those changes could, for the most part, have easily been done as a "Service Pack" to Win7. Nor are all of the changes particularly good. And many, many articles and/or public comments by business owners/operators support me on this, and quite a large number of home users also publicly agree.
  
  As I said above, if YOU like 8 and beyond, great! Good for you, and those who agree with you. But again, the numbers simply are not on your side, at least for now. Trying to argue otherwise is futile, because you can't back that up with anything more than YOUR opinion; you don't even have the numbers on your side.

  1.5.2015 19:39 #7