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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.
If they can run Android apps with the same OS level security as iOS, and the same level of app vetting as the Apple App Store - they may be onto something.
So MS has 20+% of the apps that Android has, that doesn't sound horrible. How many of those Android apps are garbage? The numbers aren't the whole story, if the 200k are much better quality than most of the 1.1M the Windows phone would win. I am not saying that is the case, just saying that comparing the number of apps in a store isn't useful information.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
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.
Statistically speaking, Android has more than 1.1M apps to Windows Phone's 200,000+
Thanks for clarifying how you were speaking, or I would have no idea how to compare those two numbers!
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Too many apps rely on proprietary stuff from Google, the part from Android that is really OS is getting smaller and smaller every time Google adds an update. And if you want to get the latest stuff from Google you're on Google's terms, meaning you have to use the Play Store, Google as a search engine and everything that comes with it.
That said, I can't think of a reason why Microsoft should not integrate Android applications, provided the results gives some reasonable user experience. I suspect that "supporting" Android applications where the user has to put up with significant numbers of crashes and hangs, rendering errors, screen geometry issues and so forth would actually hurt the platform further.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I'm wondering if slashdot should simply separate the server from the reader similar to what was done with Usenet News, and let the user community write their own interfaces?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
As a Windows Phone user I think this is a terrible idea. Didn't BlackBerry already try this? Did it help them? I don't think so. It is a slippery slope that only leads to irrelevance.
The beauty of Windows Phone is that it is not like Android and iOS. Well written WP apps, which follow the Metro (I know they don't call it that anymore) design philosophy integrate beautifully into the environment. Slapping Android apps, which follow very different conventions would diminish the user experience.
Code to live, live to code.
Microsoft doesn't own Nokia's handset business yet. So, no, it's not their phone.
So MS has 20+% of the apps that Android has, that doesn't sound horrible. How many of those Android apps are garbage? The numbers aren't the whole story, if the 200k are much better quality than most of the 1.1M the Windows phone would win. I am not saying that is the case, just saying that comparing the number of apps in a store isn't useful information.
Right, its like Fake Steve Jobs used to say "I'd rather have the 1% market that was the cream, than 99% of the crap.".
I find app stores annoying because there's too many copycat apps and too little info. You can't tell if its worth buying the expensive one or the free one. You can barely even screen a fraction of them when it's garden variety purpose.
But on a different tangent, it seems like this is effectively Wine for Windows. That is the API to run android apps in windows. I love the irony.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
But when/if they do own it ... you can bet an Android phone is going to be deemed something they don't want to be doing any more.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
So...they're basically going to do the same thing OS/2 did with Windows applications? How well did that work out for OS/2?
The fact is the interface worked just fine and didn't need drastic changing. It's not that the site needs a redesign and folks are arguing over how. It's that Dice nuts is butchering everything for revenue and nothing else. They paid X for Slashdot and are not getting the X amount out of it they wanted - hence using only the prominence of the brand to whore out whatever "audience" they can attract the eyeballs of. The community be damned.
What Desler said ... and also, you should define what you mean by "not 'Android compatible' but 100% Android" ... if the average user heard "100% Android", they would likely assume that the Play Store and all of Google's proprietary apps are on-board; and the Nokia offering is certainly based solely on the AOSP, the open source core of Android, without the Google services. Witness how the average consumer doesn't associate the Kindle Fire with Android, per se. The Nokia (soon to be MicroKia) offering would be of the same ilk. (Unless MS chose to join the Open Handset Alliance, and commit to a true Android phone - uh, yeah, snowball, meety fiery inferno)
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
Glad I looked more closely at the summary before proceeding with my original thought for a comment -- I was going to link to that exact article. The key point for those who don't RTFAs:
WHAT SHOULD MICROSOFT DO?
Choose between devices and services. The problem with pursuing both, as Microsoft is doing, is that strategy taxes are inevitable. If you favor your devices by giving them better services, you are by definition limiting your services on competing devices. Meanwhile, by offering your services on competing devices, you are limiting the competitive advantage of your devices.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Couldn't agree more
Also, the phone is still just a rumour. Wouldn't be surprised if the entrie thing turned out to be just a UI update for Asha.
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
I'd rather have the 99%, because, well, no matter how you cut it, I'd be making a lot more money.
No, it does matter how you cut it. Currently Apple is making 87% of the profits in the mobile space, Samsung 30%...
The overage is the amount those two companies are taking money not just from consumers, but how much other companies are pouring money into a black hole.
And from a developer side the cut still matters, as you can still make a lot more income from iOS apps than Android despite there supposedly being a lot more Android devices people could run apps on.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Unlike most protestors, you seem to have a brain. Thank you for a well thought out exposition of what the movement really means instead of just parroting "F Beta".
I haven't yet been switched to the new LAF, so I can't comment on Beta's strengths and short-comings. If people, like you, would say why it's bad instead of spouting profanity, maybe Dice will listen. The current theme does look like it's from the 1990s. I'm not saying that's a bad thing - I remember using Archie and Mosaic. It was a great time for a geek to grow up. Dice wants a return on its investment, so that means that current users need to unblock ads (and actually click on a few), or Dice needs to attract a new crowd that will.
But when/if they do own it ... you can bet an Android phone is going to be deemed something they don't want to be doing any more.
I wonder if they'll just take it out and shoot it, in some reasonably dignified manner, or if we'll be treated to the entertaining spectacle of a repeat of their purchase of Danger? As somebody who doesn't own MS stock, watching them shell out for a reasonably-well-functioning company, decide that they weren't going to be releasing no BSD-based handsets, and having the whole affair that used to be the 'Sidekick' go down in flames as 'Project Pink' was hilarious.
I already said in the original message that other companies in the space are losing money. That's why the profits add up to more than 100%.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Bill, Steve and Satya sit down to plan how to take over mobile.
Bill, "We've got to do this like I predicted 12 years ago."
Steve, "Right. Our engineers have been working 24 hours a day on this so we can allow any app to run on our mobile. It's going to be great Microsoft Mobile Everything Everywhere."
Satya, " .." "With all due respect Everything Everywhere is not going to work, unless you carry a PC in your pocket."
Shouldn't you be boycotting? I understand the anti-beta posts from last week, and the boycott, and altslashdot.org. I will certainly even visit it and sign up, but I at least hoped that this week I could enjoy Slashdot without the first post being another anti-beta rant. Well written, but off topic, and at this point ridiculous, as you all threatened to leave us as alone for a week. At this rate, you'll have a flourishing community on you new site, and STILL be trolling here long after it's no longer beta. Last week it wasn't irritating, it was even a bit inspiring. Now it's just stupid.
I'll bet you anything this won't support native code, just like BlackBerry's Android compatibility box. Supporting native code would require running an actual Android kernel, because native code can perform system calls and all that -- it's outside of the Java sandbox.
This isn't a rumor, it's just a news article. The article is titled "Analysis: Satya Nadella must kill Windows Phone and fork Android".
Nowhere has Microsoft given any impression that they are considering this, this is simply a writer for The Guardian thwoing out a crazy idea. From a technical and business standpoint, it's a very rough idea for Windows Phone.
Windows Phone has been doing pretty well too recently, at least as far as market share growth and raw sales numbers are concerned. It's doing quite well in Europe (which US news downplays), and in the US marketshare went from 2.6% to 4.7% over the last year. Obviously not very impressive but it's far from a dying platform.
When OS/2 was struggling for market share, IBM decided that they could bring along more customers by allowing Windows programs to run on OS/2. So they put a whole lot of effort into it and the result was a disaster. The few programs that used to have an OS/2 version no longer did. The program maker didn't see a reason to make an OS/2 version if their Windows version ran on OS/2 too. And customers saw that Windows programs ran better on Windows than on OS/2, so why buy an OS/2 machine if all of the programs you want to run, run better on this cheaper Windows machine?
>The current theme does look like it's from the 1990s.
That's a good thing. Go look at Reddit; it looks even more like an interface from the 1990s, and it's excellent. No tons of bullshit whitespace, just lots of text packed in for those of us who are able to read and don't need a lot of stupid pictures and videos.
>so that means that current users need to unblock ads (and actually click on a few), or Dice needs to attract a new crowd that will.
Like Digg did? Oh wait, Digg died.
Meanwhile, Reddit doesn't bitch about users blocking ads, and they're doing excellent financially, with not one but two offices (one in SanFran, one in NYC).
Microsoft is almost completely irrelevant as a provider of mobile devices. Why write such a prominent article, on a company that targets only a tiny part of the budget market for mobile devices? It doesn't really matter what Microsoft do. The problem is that their devices run Windows, not that they don't really have any software.
Try using a Windows phone, and you will quickly see why they are largely irrelevant.
Microsoft shouldn't fork Android. They should cease behaving badly, and become another Android phone provider. It would serve Microsoft much better, to not be a patent huckster. It damages Microsoft to behave like this, more than it damages their competitors. Who wants to do business with a company that uses these kind of tactics?
Visual Studio could be adapted quite nicely as an Android development toolchain, and Microsoft have online services to offer. The day of single vendor platforms has long passed. It looks likely that Apple will also fade fairly quickly for different reasons, as cheaper devices commoditise once quite expensive functionality. In such an environment, Apple really have nowhere to go. They have never been a hardware innovator - just a re-packager of other vendors technology. At high price points, that Apple business model could work, but as prices drop, their margins will be squeezed, and their management will likely panic, and resort to unethical behaviour, like patent hucksterism.
IBM's OS/2 was able to run DOS and Windows problems. OS/2 was billed as "a better DOS than DOS and a better Windows than Windows".
I've always thought that feature was actually OS/2's downfall. Back in the day when I had to make a choice whether to develop for Windows or for OS/2 I chose Windows because I knew that my program would run on both Windows *and* OS/2.
So, implementing Android compatibility guarantees that nobody will develop for Windows Phone. As OS/2 proved, making Windows Phone a "better Android than an Android" is a losing strategy.
Give it up, MS. You've lost mobile all over again. This is just another repeat of WinMo 6/6.5 and not many people are going to put up with it. So instead of bowing out when you knew you were beaten, you've proceeded to beat the dead horse and wasting more money on failed products. The fact that both you and Blackberry have been trying to get Android apps to run on your platforms is telling of a serious lack of confidense on your software. Just give up.
The Amarri pray for god, the Caldari pray for profit. the Gallente pray for peace, but the Minmatar pray their ships hol
lengthy doesn't mean well thought out.
It's rife with logical fallacies, pretentious BS, and flat out bad thinking.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I assumed y'all were smarter than a bag of hammers, and could google up more current results yourself. My mistake! You really *can* be that stupid!
Since you are so inept, here you go.
Sorry, Samsung was 32%, I was rounding a bit from memory - Apple was also higher, 87.4%.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I did look at reddit, and they are running in the red, pretty deeply to.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Your main problem is that no-one else agrees with you.
Complain to them, not someone who is merely repeating facts of the matter.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Please, the vast majority of them have no real interest in boycotting because they are entitled spoiled people. Why do you think more of them posted as AC? so they could post under there normal account during the so called boycott.
Think about it. They are getting 'outraged' of a change to a website.
For the record, I like the beta, but if this whinier got there way, I wouldn't leave.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Did anyone notice that Microsoft is in the process of buying a company that is rumored to have an unreleased Android phone?
FTFY.
Microsoft may soon integrate/allow Android applications into both Windows and Windows Phone."
So why buy a windows phone to run Android apps then?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
lengthy doesn't mean well thought out. It's rife with logical fallacies, pretentious BS, and flat out bad thinking.
I normally ignore the comments about Beta - I come to ./ for real comments. However, when I saw someone expressing why they hate Beta so much, I had to reward him. As a regular part of my job I interact with clients who can't express themselves beyond "I don't like it". After two weeks of pulling teeth, I find out they don't like a particular shade of blue. This commentator gives some specific examples of things to change in Beta (such as storing functionality). No, the post wasn't perfect, but it was definitely a step up for the anti-Beta crowd.
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com...
source: http://www.businessinsider.com...
2014 is the year of the Windows Phone! It will happen!
If I was Microsoft, I would be changing the way things work for Windows Phone app development. I would allow developers to register devices with MS and be able to write and load their own apps on the device without paying any money. The fees would only apply if you wanted to release your app to the world through the marketplace.
Make sure its not possible to use this to load pirated apps and make it difficult (i.e. gotta go to MS, register the device, install Visual Studio and the Windows Phone SDK, then load the apps via Visual Studio) to reduce the chance of people simply using this as a way to distribute "side-loaded" apps (i.e. things Microsoft doesn't want on Windows Phone or things where people don't want to pay MS)
This would mean people could develop for Windows Phone (both in the emulator and the actual hardware) at basically zero cost (other than buying the actual phone) and then if they decide they have something releasable, they can go to MS and get it approved and released (and pay the money). So all those who want to see if Windows Phone is a platform worth supporting without investing too heavily in it can do so.
This may seem infeasible and/or culture-prohibitive, but there's another way Microsoft could go, which could see them gaining market share in mobile, and perhaps even surpassing google/Apple eventually.
Instead of trying to figure out how to optimally leverage the technology and assets they currently have (Nokia, Office, Windows Phone, patents, etc.) to optimize their own profit, as they have been doing for the last decade or so, they could try something new: building something which actual customers want. I know it's somewhat unheard of in the age of big companies, patent portfolios, and quarterly reports, but anyone who think there's not substantial room for innovation in virtually all aspects of the mobile space is simply not trying to think.
Microsoft had (and still has remnants of) the technical might to pursue multiple avenues of innovation at the same time. If they could simply change focus away from brow-beating their reluctant customers with their latest profit-optimized business plan, and toward giving customers what they actually want (here's a free hint: a phone where you are in control of where your data is, and what apps can access it), they could still do quite well. If they continue their current business mindset, though, it won't matter what they pick to focus on: eventually, they will be toast.
obviously you should stop browsing as AC, I don't see those sliders and I browse at -1 all the time. I don't have to do anything special to do this either. There's an option in your conversations settings called "Choose your discussion system" that allows you to choose the classic style view, and it's been there ever since the sliders were introduced, took me all of 1 minute to find it when the sliders came out.
Free Pie! The Pie is Also Evil!
They already did the first part. The dev tools are free. You can do "developer registration" (enable sideloading on a phone) with any Microsoft (Live/Hotmail/Passport/whatever) account, even one that isn't tied to a Marketplace account. This has been the case since some time in 2013...
They have protections against pirating apps (the downloads from the store are DRM-encrypted and can't be sideloaded) and have also restricted the number of sideloaded apps you can have at a time (actually, that restriction was always there; it's just lower for free accounts than for paid ones) as well.
I suspect their motivation is exactly what you describe. If it's working, though, it is taking some time to do so. Part of the problem is that nobody seems to care. I submitted a story about it to /. back when they made the change, it was rejected. None of the big tech news sites said much about it either...
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
I like the idea of BB10, but as I said in another comment, the handsets aren't compelling. e.g. a Q10 is way overpriced relative to a Nexus 5.
so were smiling each time one is sold :} or to that effect.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/...
Archive for July 27th, 2011
The Microsoft/Android war: Which patents are at stake?
"You may already know Microsoft has forced five Android vendors to pay royalties each time they ship a device, and is suing Motorola and Barnes & Noble in cases that claim Android steals Microsoft intellectual property."
http://ineedinfonow.wordpress....
Describes nine patents Motorola allegedly infringes upon.
"Given that a deep-pocketed vendor like HTC already settled with Microsoft and is paying Redmond each time it sells an Android phone, it would seem Microsoft's lawyers can be quite convincing."
Googles' putting up it's own satellites and Microsoft is scrambling for a bit of the Android action, my how times have changed.
Microsoft invested in it's future through patents, being one of the larger patent trolls is an action befitting Microsoft.
Phone OSs are quickly approaching the same plateau already reached by desktop OSs: the underlying OS doesn't actually matter. What users and customers want to DO is provided not by the OS but by apps they run. When they want to check email, tweet, update Facebook or play a game, they don't _care_ what OS supports it. They only care that they can, or cannot, do the things they want to do.
The problem for Microsoft and Blackberry is that they have the OS but they do not have the stuff to run on it. The quick way to fix this problem is to take the stuff people want and allow/make it run on your OS, and generally hope the public buys it.
This has not helped Blackberry because Blackberry is not cool, because nobody carries it so there's no peer envy, because the company reeks of instability and that scares customers, and because the US carriers don't do much to support it. And BB itself does not seem to actually bother to promote this compatibility. What good is a superpower you never use or talk about?
Windows Phone has other issues, one of which is the name Windows, which I insist in my own way is a terrible brand name for a product that has nothing to do with the "windows and manila file folders" concept, and it ties it to the desktop OS, which is used but not exactly beloved. They should have called it something else. The other problems are similar to Blackberry. Lack of peer envy, lack of carrier support, lack of OEM support (buying Nokia did not help this), and lack of any sexy reason to choose Windows Phone over Android or iPhone. Windows Phone fans say it runs better, does this or that better. They miss that "better than" means nothing when most people will never see it, much less compare it to their iPhone or Galaxy.
Getting people to think about Windows Phone means giving them a reason to bother getting closer than 40 feet away. A big campaign "We run Android's million+ apps!" is better than nothing. It removes an objection. It may add an enticement. Maybe. It beats a empty app store and developer issues.
Sig for hire.
What a moronic idea.