It always seemed strange to me that Microsoft would use the Amazon store for their android subsystem and even more strange that they'd get rid of it before just bringing android apps natively to the MS store. The MS store desperately needs a draw and android efforts they could control and benefit from seemed like it could help to make up from mistakes of losing the windows phone and a mobile ecosystem. I guess porting mobile games and apps is just as good, but requires more effort on the dev/publisher side to see the MS store as worth supporting which.... umm, well I guess this tencent deal even if just in China shows that they're willing to ask really nicely. The Microsoft Store overall does need to improve massively if it wants to pull in users. Of course I still have pipe dream hopes of a windows on ARM push results in more mobile friendly hardware form factors (like a new Windows Phone that just runs full windows with a simplified UX and UI through a mobile mode that turns unnecessary stuff off and continues to let you access both native ARM apps and emulated x86).
But hey does anyone remember when like the MAJOR pull for Windows 11 was the android subsystem? And how it didn't even launch with W11? Now it's Copilot PCs which didn't launching with their big pull AI recall feature. Microsoft is really not the best at marketing and selling their devices to consumer audiences. Honestly, if they weren't already the norm I couldn't imagine how much they'd struggle with average end consumers. Like their PC market share would probably be as big as Bing's.
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