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Microsoft Rumored To Integrate Android Apps
phmadore writes "Windows Phone has been struggling for market share, largely due to a serious lack of developers willing to invest their time in what one might consider a niche market. Statistically speaking, Android has more than 1.1M apps to Windows Phone's 200,000+. Well, according to unnamed sources informing the Verge, Microsoft may soon integrate/allow Android applications into both Windows and Windows Phone."
This follows the recent debate over whether Microsoft should try to fork Android. Peter Bright made the point that doing so would be extremely difficult, and probably not worth Microsoft's time. Ben Thompson has an insightful post about how Microsoft's real decision is whether to focus on devices or services.
I find it rather amusing that Microsoft has to resort to implementing what's basically a reverse Wine because no one cares enough about their platform to write "native" (read: HTML5) crapps for it.
Remember, back in the day, when the last of the dinosaurs were being hunted to extinction by Cro-magnon man and Sun was still not-wholly-doomed?
.NETly features that Android doesn't. It'll be just like the good old days!
In order to mess with them, MS created the MS JRM, which was almost like the Sun JVM except not, in ways so obnoxious that the courts eventually forced them to back off.
Now, since Dalvik is Totally Definitely Not a JVM, MS is presumably free to produce MS Dalvik (they'll probably call it 'Microsoft Mobile Platform Interoperability Foundation 2012' or something) that supports Android applications, and has a few extra little