The folks at Microsoft is said to be considering to allow Android Apps on their Windows Phone platform. While this is a drastic step for the underdog operating system, there are those internally are in favour of the move while some have opined that this might cause a downfall of the mobile operating system that they’ve built.
It is no denying that the Android platform is growing rapidly and holds one of the biggest collection of apps. The Windows Phone platform too is slowly bridging the application gap and we’ve seen big titles showing support including Instagram, Vine and Waze that have released WP8 versions of their apps. By opening its doors to Android apps, it does appear as a quick win but it is debatable if this would be sufficient enough to attract new users.
Like the saying goes, if you can’t beat them, join them. BlackBerry recently has allowed direct installations of Android APK files in their recent 10.2.1 OS update but it is yet to be seen that this will attract more users to their fold. For now opening up to Android doesn’t seem to be a guaranteed solution.
Moving Android Apps to Windows platform pose a couple of developer challenges as well. If it is so easy to port over Android apps, there’s a risk that existing Windows Phone developers would abandon native Windows Phone app development with Metro UI implementation. Ideally they would want to strike a balance to allow growth of their native apps as well. What do you think? Does Microsoft really need to open up Windows Phone to Android apps to survive? Add on your thoughts in the comments below.
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