Microsoft Rumored To Integrate Android Apps 189
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.
Security (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Slippery slope (Score:2, Informative)
Blackberry 10 (BB10) has been able to 'side load' Android apps but not being a direct route, was troubling to some users. With the current official BB10 10.2 you can directly load Android apps. 10.2 has been rolled out by many carriers but not all just yet. My opinion to be sure, but the whole 'app gap' debacle is a freaking joke. Many of the so-called major apps BB has been missing are available in competing (and sometimes better) apps. You'd never know it thanks to all the Android and IOS fanboyism but BB10 happens to be pretty great. :)
Re:History repeating itself (Score:5, Informative)
Windows 3.1 and Win32S ran well in OS/2. What killed OS/2 in the end was that they had no access to the full Win32 API being used in Windows NT, and when Chicago/Windows 95 adopted the (nearly) full Win32 API suite, developers decided Microsoft, with its vast OEM network, was going to be the winner and abandoned any notion of supporting OS/2. I remember the last floundering days of OS/2 Warp 4, when IBM put out both a browser and an MS-Works-like office suite, as well as some sort of Win32 migration layer to the OS/2 32 bit API in the hopes that they could lure developers. Sadly, even by the mid-1990s, when my involvement with IBM as a VAR ended, Word and Excel had sufficient penetration that that last ditch attempt fell on its face, and OS/2, for all its advantages was relegated to a slow death.
Re:Yes, it does (Score:5, Informative)
That's not how it fucking works, lol. You even specified "profits" which makes even less sense. Profit is a fixed value of realized net gain. You can't have more than 100% of it, and you can't have less than 0% of it. You can't conflate Company B's LOSS with another's PROFIT to determine the MARKET's PROFIT. There's a reason we separate out PROFIT and LOSS.
Here's an example since I'm sure you still don't get it (you'll probably REFUSE to get it since you linked to appleinsider.com ).
Company A: $6 Profit
Company B: $4 Profit
Company C: $0 Profit/Loss
Company D: $5 Loss
Market X had a PROFIT of $10 AND a LOSS of $5 ACROSS Companies A, B, C, and D.
You never talk about a MARKET's Profit or Loss as a whole, you talk about its REVENUE, or its Profits ACROSS those Companies which were Profitable, and losses across those which bleeding.
Company A got 60% of the Profit, Company B got 40%.
Company D made up 100% of the Loss.
Company C broke even.
You absolutely do not fucking count it as $5 Profit across the Market with Company A getting 120% of the Profit and Company B getting 80% (and Company C getting -100%).
Profit is not a fucking vector. It is always positive. You cannot conflate Profit and Loss and flip the fucking sign.
So why do Apple shits like to report it this way? Because they're fucking morons who read a table and don't understand what the numbers mean, or they simply want to see Apple have a larger number so they purposefully concoct bullshit like this.
With 87% and 30%, assuming no other profitable players, you're really dealing with 74.36% and 25.64%.
Furthermore, your link says 56% and 53%, not 87% and 30%. With 56% and 53%, you're really dealing with 51.38% and 48.62%.