Native Android app support in Windows 10 could arrive this year. In recent years we have seen Microsoft’s interest in Android, and Project Latte is probably the clearest consummation of these plans.
Native Android app support in Windows 10 could arrive this year
Although the goal of this project may seem too ambitious and complex, the reality is that it could be much closer than we thought at the end of last year, when we started to hear about it. This, of course, makes us think that Redmond has been working on it for quite some time. According to Gizchina, Project Latte could debut sometime this year.
If you do not know it, you should know that Project Latte aims to bring Android apps to Windows 10, but unlike what we have seen so far, that is, through emulators or stream from an Android device, this time we would be talking about native support, that is, Microsoft’s operating system would be able to run Android apps without using devices and without layers of an emulation layer in which to run an instance of Android.
Project Latte’s proposal is for application developers to package and distribute their applications in MSIX format, Microsoft’s big bet to unify the different installation systems currently in place and, incidentally, attract more developers to bring their creations to Windows 10. And although the ecosystem of apps for Windows is still huge, in recent years the interest of developers has in this order to iOS, Android, and web. And the best example of this is the “scarce” offer that we can find in Microsoft Store.
To make this possible, Project Latte is based on the development of an Android subsystem that, in turn, would be based on the Linux subsystem already present in Windows 10 for some time. In this way, developers would not have to apply practically any changes to their apps to package them as MSIX and, in this way, make them available on Windows, in addition to Android.
The only problem for Project Latte, however, and which can be a stumbling block, is that some Android apps are dependent on some Google services (since these are taken for granted on Android devices), which will not be present on Windows. Thus, app developers who want to bring their apps to Windows will have to take this limitation into account, either to give up some functions or to look for alternatives that are available on Windows.
Another aspect that is still not very clear is whether the versions of Android apps that come to Windows 10 thanks to Project Latte will necessarily have to do so through the Microsoft Store or, on the contrary, they can be downloaded from any source, as is already the case with other installer formats compatible with Microsoft’s operating system. If Redmond decides to channel all Android apps coming to Windows 10 through the app store, this could be a boost for the Windows online app store.
