Last week, MS announced Windows 11 at 2021 MS Windows Event, a new chapter of a 6-year-old “next chapter”, Windows 10. Will this long-overdue redesign be a renaissance, another Vista glorious fiasco, or just another release to the personal computing market? I’ve my own opinion, what’s yours? While the story is still to be told, there is a surprise addition: running Android apps, curated by Amazon’s appstore in Windows store.
It’s not new as there’ve been many ways to run Android apps on Windows for years. But, there are good reasons for MS to do so, e.g. to play better in the mobile game, improve its app ecosystem economy, and most importantly to be able to complete for the next generation of app development platform & ecosystem. Sure, the last one may seem far-fetched today. But, let’s let the bullet flies a bit longer 😉.
Play better in the mobile game
No matter what, it takes courage for Bill Gates to openly share a very valuable lesson learned. To inspire startups in solving the world’s hardest problems in 2019, he said: “…whatever mismanagement I engaged in that caused MS not to be what Android is…”. Even so, MS still needs to play to stay in the mobile game, which is not going away anytime soon. And, as soon as MS gave up the Windows Mobile focus strategy in 2017, MS becomes very flexible on its strategies, such as Surface Duo powered by Android, Link to Windows, MS Launcher… Running Android apps on Windows is just a natural next step, or even arguably a necessary countermeasure to Apple’s ambition to unify its app ecosystems.
Better app ecosystem economy
In 2012 a study by Google, 90% of users have been hopping between screens to get jobs done. Apple has been double downing on Continuity to help users accomplishing more with multiple Apple devices since 2014. To Apple’s credit, its “good timing lucks” are mostly coming from the continuous drum beats 🥁 to innovate. Beside of adding platform features to make that easy across devices, running the same client apps across devices significantly reduce complexity, cost & time for the whole app ecosystem.
For MS to be a relevant modern app development platform, or “the platform for platform creators” as the CEO, Satya Nadella frames it, MS has to make a better app ecosystem economy or at least be a competitive one. And, Android app is a sample choice for MS.
The next frontier
Here is one more tip for MS to get ahead. Apple is moving full speed ahead to the next generation development workflow on the cloud by introducing Xcode Cloud as a service last month. So, MS can choose to distribute itself or wait to be distributed by helping creators to ship all kinds of apps easier as a service, or at least for the key types of apps.
For example, MS Visual Studio Professional Subscription is a cash cow for MS for now. Windows app developers pay $1+K tax to get the IDE to play. It makes sense by MS traditional SW license business model even in a subscription form. MS can do better than that. Don’t get me wrong, MS maybe use a lot of the license money to found great development & support efforts. Also, MS can still collect the tax of developing Windows apps as it a very long time. But the future may be moving toward a development platform as a service. Which is much more than just changing from buying to renting business model. For MS, you already paid $7.5B for Github. Why not doubling them down by connecting the dots early.
Full Disclosure
The opinions stated here are my own, not those of my company. They are mostly extrapolations from public information. I don’t have insider knowledge of those companies, nor a whatever expert.
