Windows 10 Will be Able to Run Android and iOS Apps

Microsoft has finally announced its plans to bring Android’s and iOS’s apps to Windows 10.

Rumours about such apps being ported to Windows 10 have been around for quite a while but Microsoft has finally made the move in an attempt to encourage users to port to its mobile devices which have failed to make a mark. The company seems to have opted for a method which will enable developers to port their current code to Windows 10.

This means that both Android and iOS developers enjoy the luxury of directly bringing their existing games and apps to Windows 10. Microsoft has a couple of new software development kits to thank for this. Courtesy of the new dev kits, iOS developers can fully utilize the potential of the Objective C code whereas Android developers would be able to benefit from C++ code and Java. The idea is to make this transition easy for developers in order to allow them to utilize their existing code and skills to build apps.

Android and iOS developers can directly bring their existing games and apps to Windows 10 through new APIs

While it may sound like porting apps without having to completely rebuild them must be a piece of cake, the process is actually a tad bit complicated. Terry Myerson from Microsoft gave the reference of Android in this regard, “If they’re using some Google API… we have created Microsoft replacements for those APIs.” Ultimately, Microsoft expects all developers to bring their existing code to their OS without a lot of changes. Candy Crush Saga is one of those games that was converted with Microsoft’s tools from iOS code.

Ultimately, Microsoft expects all developers to bring their existing code to their OS without a lot of changes

Myerson revealed that Microsoft initially considered getting only iOS onboard but later decided to support both, iOS and Android. The company realized that iOS devices are not available in some countries and support for iOS as well as Android would widen their own spectrum of apps. These apps would only be available via the online store and make use of dedicated Windows online services like Bing maps. It will be interesting to see if this move allows Windows to break free of the trap it finds itself in with a scarcity of apps.