Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11 • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#91

Post by jacob019 » Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

poisonborz wrote: post #81

brainless wrote: post #54

Is it just me or does anyone else think this is Microsoft's first step to create it's own Android fork eventually? I have been thinking what's really keeping the "new" Microsoft outside the smartphone game? Google creating a desktop OS market share is not really on the horizon. But if Microsoft takes the right steps it might venture out to smartphones again, and gain market share this time. The HN crowd may not be th…

They wouldn't have Play Services, which gives all the power of the ecosystem. Just having a good desktop back country doesn't help anything in the mobile space, as Windows Phone showed. It also won't go without experienced hardware partners, and Samsung is already in Google's pocket, the other top dogs being Chinese, who don't look for fitting in the western markets anymore.

Not exactly. Play services/GCM is the push notification system on Android. Even on my completely degoogled phone I have to use microG to support push notifications from google's servers because every app developer has hardcoded their app to use GCM. It doesn't have to be that way. An alternate push notification service with a client alternative could be made available. Developers and users could start using it. Ideally there would be a standardized protocol, and a system setting so that the user can set their preferred push notification provider. Apps would use the system provided endpoint for push notifications and we would get a little control back. I sure wish I could self host push notifications.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#92

Post by gman83 » Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

handrous wrote: post #57

015a wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Google is in a position to "replace" Android. They simply don't control the hardware; they can ship Fuchsia to their Home assistants and thermostats, but when it comes to phones and personal computing devices, they don't have many cards to play (beyond Pixel, like 0.5% of the Android market). The power lies with hardware manufacturers and developers. Their new wearables partnership with Samsung may help…

Right, but if no-one picks up the torch of maintaining and developing Android and giving it away to device manufacturers, I'd imagine going with the new Google OS that they are going to do that for, would be very tempting. Most phone manufacturers haven't shown an interest in putting a ton of work into the Android, themselves, even just to customize it beyond adding some shovel-ware and maybe a theme (notable excepti…

If Google were to ditch Android for Fuchsia, I could see this Microsoft/Amazon alliance stepping in and saying they'll build Android moving forward.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#93

Post by pimterry » Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 5:46 PM UTC

an_opabinia wrote: post #72

NelsonMinar wrote: post #8

The article says this relies on "Intel Bridge Technology". Anyone know more about it? All I could find easily was https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/discre... Want to highlight one paragraph from that description: "Intel Bridge Technology is run-time post compiler that can be integrated into Android-in-Container to enable certain Android apps – those not written in Java or compiled to run natively…

There are few categories of apps this targets. “Clubhouse for Android” category: avant- grade apps that launch first on Android or define android platform. Nonexistent. “Median phone user ecosystem:” The TikTok Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, Snapchat, China app ecosystem and India app ecosystem. The experience of all these is bad on Windows browsers or unavailable. ”Games”: hard to say, because Windows is a…

> ”Games”: hard to say, because Windows is a better platform for games than Android by 10x.

Note that there are quite a few commercial "Android on PC" emulators already, e.g. https://www.memuplay.com/, https://www.bluestacks.com/ and https://www.bignox.com/.

In terms of scale, Bluestacks claim they have 50 million monthly active users which makes them pretty substantial! From https://www.bluestacks.com/promote-your-game.html. Overall mobile gaming revenue is now larger than console gaming and more than 2x PC gaming, and rapidly growing (https://scaletech.medium.com/mobile-gaming-statistics-trends...). Android gaming is a much bigger market than you'd imagine, especially for the younger generation.

> hard to see how it competes with the median user getting an iPhone

> This is the case with the consumer in China, where ... the iPhone is still preferred by those who can afford it

I think you're seriously overestimating how popular iPhones are, even to users who can afford them. Especially if you're looking at Windows users, Android is hugely dominant outside the US.

In China for example, iOS market share is actually constant around 20% or maybe slightly declining over the last decade (https://www.statista.com/statistics/262176/market-share-held...) despite the huge increase in average purchasing power, which makes it seem unlikely that the only thing holding people in China back from them is the price.

Globally, Android is at 70% of devices (https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide) even in relatively wealth areas like the EU. iOS is primarily popular in the USA (where it's about 60% of devices). I suspect iOS and Mac usage are fairly closely correlated, so the Android percentage goes up substantially if you're only looking at Windows users. I think Android integration actually makes a lot of sense for Microsoft!

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#94

Post by catern » Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

I wonder if this will share anything with WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux)?

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#95

Post by jbverschoor » Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

sudosensei wrote: post #55

pcapca wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that apps written in java/kotlin are easy to run in a x86 compatible android runtime. The difficulty is for native code, the arm libraries embedded in many apps. Actually most Android app depends on native libs. For image processing for example. Nearly all games are using native arm binaries. The sentence you quoted is probably related to native code only, which is the difficult part. It looks like they h…

Intel used to call this Houdini. It was also used in Android-x86. Last I looked at the Android-x86 sources, binfmt was used to configure certain types of binaries to be translated on-the-fly by Houdini before running the translated x86.

Houdini.. I hope it doesn't escape its locked sandbox

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#96

Post by moogly » Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

But why? I can think of exactly 0 Android apps I would like to run on my Windows desktop (and I've been an Android user since the original Samsung Galaxy S). Is this really something people crave to do?

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#97

Post by dmitrybrant » Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

bilal4hmed wrote: post #3

Thats fantastic, but how does this work with purchases made on the Play store. If I bought an app on the Play Store does it carry across to Amazon ?

Absolutely not -- the Amazon app store and the Google Play store are completely different entities. The fact that Microsoft partnered with Amazon instead of Google for app store integration is a strong indication of how serious they are about this whole thing.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#98

Post by layer8 » Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

bitL wrote: post #89

tootie wrote: post #14

This is neat but I'm struggling to think of a case where this would be useful.

You can get the free Microsoft Office from Android running on Windows 11 "natively"...

It’s only free for screen sizes up to 10", isn’t it?

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#99

Post by dmitrybrant » Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

Microsoft really wants to convince you that your phone and your PC are the same thing. But they've failed in the execution of this idea several times now.

The fact that this partnership is with the Amazon app store, not the Google Play store, is a strong hint of how serious they are about this, and how this latest iteration will work out.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#100

Post by cblconfederate » Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 5:55 PM UTC

moogly wrote: post #96

But why? I can think of exactly 0 Android apps I would like to run on my Windows desktop (and I've been an Android user since the original Samsung Galaxy S). Is this really something people crave to do?

maybe ... they want to stop the javascript-based desktop app craze. E.g. their android skype mobile does not look much different from their skype desktop now.

Maybe they want to steal google's OS