Windows 10: Steve Ballmer thinks the future of Windows Phone is Android

Unfortunately Microsoft's biggest problem is Microsoft... Windows Phones are dead is my prediction, they have struggled for years to try and get it right, I doubt they ever will.

 

The best way for Microsoft to succeed with mobile phones at this stage would be if they could buy out Android. Otherwise, I think they are too late to the party.

 

I wonder if this will work for them any better than it did for BlackBerry. Sure didn't work for them but MS has deeper pockets if that helps.

 

It's sad in a way if Windows Phone OS does not survive. Most of the changes in Windows 8x and 10x (namely metro additions) have been made so that the OS could be ported to non x86 platforms (WinRT tablets, Nokia devices).

Win or lose (even if they were late to the game), Microsoft had to do this because they needed to be seen by their stakeholders as trying to enter that game. So they needed to get into the mobility world. But if WinRT or Windows Phone does not survive, all of the changes to the architectural made to 8x and 10x will be for nigh.

So even if I never come to like Windows 10 (I like 8x pretty much), it's still sad to see effort expended for any reason that doesn't result in success.

 

new Lumia 950 was awesome to play around with, but despite me being pure Nokia guy and by that, win10 too, i hate to say it out but guess i have to be checking around the androids sooner or later *Sad

its stupid that the apps-side never got off in a way androids/apples comparable

 

I'm reading that MS's Project Astoria may have been shut down - so much for "legally" running Android apps on Windows phones...

 

Running Android apps on WP or porting apps to WP is not the problem for the majority of developers. The apps are 'weak' because the APIs exposed by the Windows Runtime are weak and severely crippled in comparison to other platforms.

At least 6 apps I've wanted to port to WP over the last few years just can't be ported to WP (aka Windows Runtime) anytime soon since the APIs are either severely lacking and/or missing important features or have been restricted to Microsoft-only applications such as Edge (this same issue is one Google raised about the inability to port Chrome to WP anytime soon). The majority of android applications just can't ever be ported to WP due to these issues and its the same issue if you tried to 'emulate' these applications since the emulator would also need these APIs for the application to actually do what its able to do on Android and other platforms.

Hopefully in the next few years Microsoft will have closed the API gap with future versions of the Windows Runtime (and WP10) but I don't expect any serious work being done here considering the last 3 years of developers complaining about API issues when they have tried to port their applications. This is why WP apps (and W10 store apps) have been severely lacking features, functionality and unable to properly compete with Android *Huh

 

Dmex, did you ever port any of your Android apps to BlackBerry?