Why fight if you can use your rival for your own benefit?

[Long Xuyen]

I think that this is a trick question. If you use someone else's platform then you are exposed to any change that is made to their platform that might require you to rewrite slabs of your code at some expense. While ever Nadella and Belfiore persist with this "let's all go android" approach they are inevitably starting down the slippery slope to MS's demise.

 

[fdalbor]

Would a should a, didn't. That battle has long been OVER. Let it go. After 3 years of using Windows phone I finally got the message and now use Android phones and tablets an a Windows computer.

 

[PatW]

Actually Mobile World United UWP's are being developed. You seem very negative. From my experience the Microsoft Launcher works well. Both IPhone and Android are boring as hell and have their own app issues, particularly Android. It's a fact that most people only use 6-10 apps at any time. So 1.5 million apps on android or ITunes is overkill. Personally I wouldn't waste money on a chrome book. Windows and Surface have left it for dead.....

 

[Remy_S]

Why bother now? There is no more app gap, because MS no longer has an OS for touch based devices. No, Win10 does not count, because it's just a desktop OS with a start menu blown up to full screen. Win 8.1 and Win 10 Mobile were MS's last OS's for touch based devices and both have been abandoned.
Developers will just continue to create Win 32 apps for Win 10, of which there a millions (UWP is as good as dead without mobile too, xbox and MR are just to small to make dev's care about UWP). So creating an emulator to run Android apps on Windows is pointless. Besides you already have Bluestacks for that, although it sucks.
Just look around. How many touch based Windows devices are on the marked today? Almost non! Most devices that have touch capability, are hybrids, which are mostly designed to be used with mouse and keyboard. Unless MS should actually launch their rumored "Core OS" or whatever it's called and actually make it touch friendly, you won't see any more Windows tablets or telephony devices in the future either.

 

[tgp]

If you use someone else's platform then you are exposed to any change that is made to their platform that might require you to rewrite slabs of your code at some expense.

Well, Microsoft is the master of this! I don't think they'll be outdone anytime soon in this respect.

 

[abrichman]

They should work with VMWare to make a virtual machine environment, like parallels on mac.

Not sure this moves the meter. Say they were to convince VMware to write a port to Android so they could run a Windows Mobile hypervisor, think the issue gets worse than it is today. Not only are you fighting the "no apps" argument (if your interest is to supplant the host), now you are a Type 2 hypervisor that would potentially get knocked off it's rocker with a firmware changes to the underlying host. You would probably benefit more from having a Hyper-V guest in a current Windows Mobile device that ran Android Oreo (or whatever letter treat we are on today) in some sort of integrated mode (like VMware's Unity Mode) so that you wouldn't know you are running inside the guest OS. I assume MS would have done this if it was feasible to do so with either licensing Android OS as a Guest or there weren't issues with running a hypervisor on an ARM Cortex host.

 

[BanditoTR]

Fo a quick web search and use win 32 apps instead. They tend to be better anyways.

 

[mwright53]

At this point, my expectations or so low that I don't really care anymore.

 

[thomasthomaslai]

what are people 's experience running android amulator I heard Blackberry tried without much success, even chrombooks are not running perfectly, what about bluestack for windows?

 

[Christopher Kendalls]

That would not be a problem if Android stopped competing on Windows on price. Right now it is cheaper, and more feasible, to just get a cheap Android for Android apps, than to deal with Android apps on Windows Phone which would inevitably require more powerful hardware to do the same that Android can do on less capable hardware. It sounds great in theory though.

The real advantage would be clean devices with no bloatware, and the ability to run every app off of the SD card, but that's really where the advantages would end. Plus Microsoft would need to gain access to Google Play Services to make it worthwhile, so they would have to pay the Google tax.

Microsoft just needs to give us an Android phone and be done with it already. No need to emulate, because there isn't anything on Windows Mobile worth switching back to. I'd rather have Microsoft as an Android OEM. It sickens me to see Samsung Galaxy 8 sold in the store when Microsoft could be an OEM and sell their own Android devices in their own store.

I just don't get it. There is no shame in being an OEM. Microsoft was never a serious contender in hardware anyway. The only thing they ever had was the Surface and the Xbox. Zune, depending on who you ask. That's it. I think they have a mouse and a keyboard that people swear by but phones, it just isn't going to happen unless Microsoft adopts to the marketplace. Isn't Blackberry now running full Android on their devices? At Microsoft would be able to move hardware in this space if they adopted Android. We know that the UI would be good. And we know that you would get exactly what you need, without any bloat, if they were to do it. I just can't wrap my mind around it. I would definitely purchase a phone from Microsoft if they were to do this.

 

[c4995z]

Yes, I want to be able to access any app on the platform of my choice, or on the one which is most conveniently available to me. And developers want to make their products available to the largest audience at the least effort at the lowest commission competitive. This means letting iOS and Android apps flow freely to the Windows platform.

It is a shame that the scarce resources of humanity must be spent to build three copies of the same program, one for iOS, one for Android, and one for legacy desktop. Or, that additional effort must be spent writing to some middle, least common denominator environment. The walls which have been built only serve platform monopolist who seek to enslave customers and developers in a financially abusive relationship.

Nadella, Tear Down This Wall! Let the apps flow freely and seek their natural destination on the platforms on which people choose to use vs have to use. My ability to use the rich functionality which may exist in the Android or iOS marketplace should not be determined by someone else's opinion of whether I should be allowed to or not. On the way to building the ultimate mobile device, build the ultimate platform which allows unbound access to any app of my choice!

 

[Vincent McLaughlin]

Xbox is far from being too small of an ecosystem. The real problem is, it doesn't make sense to have all UWP apps to be available on Xbox. Some apps just wouldn't make sense to have on Xbox.

 

[Pierre Blackwell]

The question would be what would MSFT have to gain by doing that? From a hardware perspective, what could MSFT contribute into an already congested market that would rival the Pixel, latest Galaxy or Note or iPhone? Even when MSFT was producing phones at a more consistent basis, the real feature that was the tip of the spear used to be the camera features, especially on the LUMIA's. Windows hello is a great feature, but Apple and Android have similar features that are equivalent. If I'm an iPhone user or Android user, I don't think I'd be looking at a MSFT designed Android phone. From a software perspective, it would do nothing to further MSFT's push for the Windows OS either. The "app gap" is a factor for those who have transitioned to another platform, but for many who never even witnessed an Windows phone, it was never about the lack of apps, but what UI they are used to. To most of my friends the live tiles provide too much information to process. I think they're just conditioned to the generic icons of the iPhone and Android, but to each their own right?

 

[diego3336]

With Windows 10 on ARM, I think MS should make their own version of Android to run alongside with Windows 10 on ARM, with the "MS Android" running when the device is in Phone mode and Windows running when docked.

MS can do that and isn't that difficult, considering Android is open source and MS is the only one that has access to the whole Windows source code, nobody else has this 'privilege' to have access to the source codes of both OSes

 

[tgp]

The question would be what would MSFT have to gain by doing that? From a hardware perspective, what could MSFT contribute into an already congested market that would rival the Pixel, latest Galaxy or Note or iPhone?

I think that a Microsoft-produced Android phone would be the first consideration for many ex-WM users. But whether they'd end up buying one is another story. It would no doubt be designed to promote Microsoft's services, which is probably their ultimate goal in a mobile device anyway.

How many WP/WM users bought them because they were Microsoft fans though? I think a lot of users had them because they were Nokia. Some became Microsoft fans, while others are following Nokia to their current Android devices.

Disclaimer: I'm not saying that I think Microsoft should produce an Android phone. I don't. I'm just offering an alternate perspective.

 

[Joe Danko]

If there's one company that can create flawless emulators, it's Microsoft. They've proven them selves with Xbox 360 on One and Windows 10 on ARM. So why not creating a built-in emulator for android or ask Bluestacks developers to build one for Surface? If this device is a Windows PC then it can easily handle the current Bluestacks app for Windows with no problem. However a built-in version is always better for performance. With this simple solution app gap will no longer be a problem. Who doesn't love a pocket sized PC that can run APKs like any other android device?

I have used Bluestacks and ANDY Android emulators but the now I use NOX. NOX is so much better than anything else. NOX refers to itself as an Android Player. NOX has so much more in the way of controls and features, MS could do worse than adopt it as it stands.

 

[WandowsTan]

Why cant you just let it go and get an android phone instead ? do you really wanna kill the optimization windows mobile has cause the last time black berry tried this, it killed their market and sent it spiraling down so fast that they eventually had to utterly ditch their own platform, now blackberry is just a modified version of android and nothing more yet it still doesn't sell enough cause what they did killed their own market and drove away the majority of fans who where there for the platform experience. If ever they try that with windows mobile it will kill the platform and the windows store including UWP , all in one go so its best you stop calling yourself a Microsoft fan if you want android apps to be emulated on your Windows phone, its time to move on. you should get yourself a stock android phone and customize it into a phone that relies on Windows services instead, cause that is much easier to do than complain about it here, you should have some sense and not waste time on nonsense.

 

[Pairadyce]

Google didn't even want to make apps for the Windows OS (which started the death of the app ecosystem), what do they gain from having Microsoft as an OEM? Not like your Microsoft account will ever coherently sync with your Google account. Microsoft would be better off trying to coerce Apple to port their store apps with their conversion project they abandoned. At least Apple showed a willingness to align by working on an iTunes UWP, but even that has been virtually forgotten since it was announced. On would think they would have released that before the death of Groove but now it just seems like Apple said "nah, never mind" and then Microsoft said "well, I guess use Spotify"

I think it would be good to have more apps, but practically it is nonsensical for both companies.

 

[tecknotot]

What if Microsoft purchased only the Android part of Google and combined the best of both worlds? I found the UX on Windows Phone to be the best of any smartphone out on the market.

 

[Stiv X]

Did it work for Blackberry?