
Microsoft Wants to Embed Windows Phone into Every Android Device - codelion
http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/android-windows-phone-chestburster-dual-booting/
======
beloch
How is more choice bad for consumers? There are phones I currently wouldn't
touch that I would consider using if I could put any mobile OS I wanted onto
them. We should applaud HTC if they choose to make phones that aren't locked
to one OS. If MS wants to provide a struggling HTC with incentives to do just
that, so much the better.

~~~
ihsw
Three words: embrace, extend, extinguish.

Microsoft will push for better interoperability between the two OSes, however
MS will notably utilize proprietary features (disk access protocols or some-
such) and encourage handset manufacturers to utilize and rely on these
proprietary interfaces.

What's the problem with this? More features are better, right?

 _Wrong._ When it comes to Microsoft, they will happily and quickly change
proprietary communications protocols and file formats so that competitors --
AHEM, partners -- cannot keep up with these changes. At some point in the
future, MS will ignore requests for technical specifications on the changes
made and the partner's features will languish into obsolescence.

Features built on top of this integration between the two OSes will be half-
baked and second-rate compared to the native Windows Phone experience, and
they will be frequently incomplete or unstable.

MS will be using this opportunity to influence the direction of Android (and
its derivatives), and they will be pushing it directly into the ground.
Integration between the two OSes will break and Android will be left out in
the cold.

~~~
Mikeb85
This cannot be stressed more. Microsoft's business practices have not changed,
nor has their mission, this is just another ploy to lock consumers into their
ecosystem....

~~~
pedalpete
Wouldn't you say that all the competitors are following in Microsoft's
footsteps?

It isn't like Apple and Google are not also trying to lock you into their
platforms.

~~~
Mikeb85
Apple definitely is. They used the same strategy by switching to x86 and
making it easy to run Windows on a Mac.

Google is a bit different, since they have a distributed platform that you can
use on literally, any OS. They definitely want people on their platform, but
so far they haven't taken any steps to 'lock' people in (I mean, they renewed
their contract with Mozilla, they open-sourced Chromium/Chromium OS, Android,
etc...).

I suspect most people are in Google's ecosystem simply because it's better.
And until Google say, makes Chrome and Google services run only on Chromebooks
and Motorola phones, I'd say they haven't behaved the same as Apple and
Microsoft.

~~~
pedalpete
I find this interesting, does platform lock-in have to mean that you've bought
a technical platform (OS)? Google locks you in by having your data on their
services. The new 'lock-in' is cloud storage and cloud based apps. I think the
big money isn't from directly locking in consumers, but rather locking in
enterprise. That's where Microsoft also made a ton of its money.

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manojlds
At a time when Lumia 520 and Lumia 925 have been selling like hot cakes (
don't know about 1020, but it has excellent reviews so far ) in many regions
and WP is slowly, slowly gaining some market share, the article seems to
underestimate WP a lot.

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Daegalus
I disagree. Even though it seems most people hate WP8, or Microsoft, or
whatever gets your panties in a bunch about it, I would love to get one of
these. I really like WP8, and have had up to the 920, but there are just some
apps that I need right now that don't have even 3rd party equivalents, so I am
forced to use Android (its not bad, but I still would prefer WP8 with the same
apps)

I would buy this in a heartbeat. I have an HTC One anyway, so if its just an
HTC One with both, i am right at home.

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tass
If I had the option of a good, dual-booting phone, I would take it.

If I could then quickly switch to the other OS within a virtual machine to run
an app or access some data, even better.

There's a lot of crud behind why it's a bad idea rather than actual reasoning.

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kilroy123
The Lumia windows phones actually don't look that bad, and I've heard from
people they're pretty slick.

However, it's not just a phone you're buying and wanting, it's an ecosystem.
You want email, music, video, apps, and everything in between, to sync
seamlessly with all your devices. I don't want Microsoft's ecosystem, and more
and more people don't these days.

As far as dual booting windows, I would probably try it once, and never try
again.

~~~
tluyben2
I think this is the point; I don't know many people who care at all what OS
the phone is running. They buy Lumia because it was a good deal but don't
really notice what is running on it. They start complaining when it's hard to
put their music/movies on it; when they cannot play the games their friends
are playing or when they cannot use certain apps. My wife has a Lumia and is
complaining how it is far more annoying to transfer music/movies/pics to it
than Android / iOS which currently is the reason she doesn't really use it
despite it being decent smartphone.

I see some changes as well when it comes to apps and games; in 'the olden
days' when you wanted to create software you picked some eco system and was
kind of bound to it if you wanted to have a half decent user experience. Like
you had to pick DOS or Win or Unix or Mac OS (before that even options like
Amiga/Atari); cross platform stuff hardly existed and if it did it was
horrible. Now, especially for games, it is possible to reuse almost all code
on all platforms, so launches of apps/games are simply across platforms. So
why would you care about what OS you are running? It's not like the interfaces
are vastly different...

Which is the other difference; I still know people who cannot 'use' anything
else than Windows; they just don't 'get' it when they are in front of Mac OS X
or Ubuntu. That's why Win8 without start button was such a bad idea; a lot of
'non geeks' just couldn't use it at all after the previous versions since
'95\. With touch devices all are simple enough for my 93 year old grandfather
to use; all of them. Android, iOS, Firefox OS, WP8 etc. They are not the same
but so simple they are interchangeable after a few minutes interface wise.
Another reason to not care about the OS at all.

------
molecule
Stage 3: Bargaining

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-
Ross_model](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model)

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rxp
This article is weirdly convinced that Microsoft is talking about dual-booting
WP and Android, but even the source article they cite says that that's pretty
unlikely.

~~~
xerophtye
Yeah... from the cited article[1]:

"Of course, there’s no official confirmation this type of deal has been
discussed, so it must be taken as a rumor for now."

[1] [http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/microsoft-wants-
windows-...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/microsoft-wants-windows-
phone-on-htcs-android-phones/)

------
TYPE_FASTER
Instead of effectively dual-booting Android/WPF, Microsoft should add a
compatibility layer to WPF to run Android apps.

~~~
Someone
== Microsoft should kill their platform.

If all windows phones ran all android apps, why would anyone write apps for
Windows phones? That's especially true for the long tail. A popular a Windows
phone OS with Android support may get a Twitter app and a Facebook app, but
your bank's app or that public transport one? Forget it.

We have seen that with OS/2 and its Windows compatibility layer, with Mac OS
when Apple advocated Java, and in some sense with Linux and Wine (a great
effort, but it does give people an excuse for not porting their stuff to
Linux.)

I think they would be better of writing a launcher for Android that launches
Windows apps. If that gets popular, they could start leveraging that by
releasing new features on their hardware first and on the Android layer later.
Good idea? I wouldn't know, but the reverse certainly isn't.

~~~
timthorn
That's effectively the same argument as if all smartphones run HTML5 apps, why
would anyone write native code?

~~~
Someone
Only slightly so. The answer to that question is "because they can do more
things, better".

A native compatibility layer does (almost) everything the 'real' system does,
(almost) equally well. If it doesn't, people will be disappointed with it, and
by extension, with your system ("yes, Windows Phone can run Android apps, but
some will crash, and that game does only 20 frames per second")

If/when HTML can provide the same experience as native code on a mobile phone,
many of what now are apps will move to web-only.

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itsbits
I am using windows phone for more than 3 months now..and I am happy I moved
from Andriod to Windows...

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uvTwitch
What Microsoft should probably be doing instead, is writing some software
layer to enable running apps based on a certain popular open-source operating
system to run seamlessly on their device alongside native apps. If they did,
it wouldn't be the first time MS has written a better Java VM than the
official implentation.

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josteink
What Microsoft is slowly discovering is what their competitors discovered back
in the 90s: how hard it is to enter an established market.

Back then Apple was also ahead of the curve for a long time and carved out is
own niche market, slowly to see a competitor take the mainstream market share.

No matter how good your solution is, no matter if it is technically superior,
like Linux was in most respects compared to 16-bit and pre-nt versions of
windows, once an established player appears, the dominant platform already has
the key applications and mindshare and because of that gets to keep it.

Thus in Linux-land people made wine to cover their windows compatibility
needs. Will Microsoft admit defeat and add an android compatibility layer into
windows phone?

I doubt it, but I have no doubt they should.

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zobzu
i'd be happy if i could load "whatever os i want" on my phone. android,
windows, firefoxos, or a random linux distro. ;-)

~~~
Mikeb85
This of course would be the ideal situation for the consumer. Doubt it will
happen though.

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PakG1
Microsoft is taking something out of Google's playbook. Google is doing
something similar with their Chrome apps on Windows, just that this is a lot
crazier and resource intensive.

~~~
Mikeb85
Except at least Google is making their platform available on every other
platform (that allows them in anyway). With Microsoft you know that eventually
they're just going to pull out the rug and lock everyone in...

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dnautics
They tried to do this with BeOS back in the day. They forced hitachi and sony
to release their BeOS machines with windows as the primary boot and hid the
BeOS from usage.

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guardian5x
This article is based on rumors that are not even very likely. I'm surprised
its voted up so high. I guess when its about bashing MS, the facts don't even
matter so much.

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jpd750
Isn't this just point of desperation! MS just needs to learn they wont rule in
an android-iphone dominated market ... kinda like blackberry... wait who?

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void-star
Triple boot to iOS and I'll think about it...

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bsullivan01
_" Revise Windows Phone. Right now, as nice as it looks, there are a lot of
reasons to choose Android or iPhone over Windows Phone, but few reasons to
choose Windows Phone over Android and iPhone"_

Revise what exactly? Windows is perfectly fine for probably 95% of the people.
Revising it will not make a difference, but price, branding, apps, deals with
Verizon, AT&T etc will make a difference.

~~~
manojlds
The article talks about lots of "reasons" without giving any example.

