Support for native Android apps in Windows 10 could arrive this year. In recent years, we've seen Microsoft's interest in Android, and Project Latte is probably the clearest realization of those plans.
Support for native Android apps in Windows 10 could arrive this year
While the goal of this project may seem overly ambitious and complex, the reality is that it could be much closer than we thought at the end of last year when we first started hearing about it. This, of course, makes us think Redmond has been working on it for some time. According to Gizchina, Project Latte could debut this year.
If you don't know, know that Project Latte aims to bring Android apps to Windows 10, but unlike what we've seen so far, i.e. via emulators or stream from a device Android, this time we would talk about native support, i.e. Microsoft's operating system would be able to run Android apps without using any devices and without layers of an emulation layer in it. which to run an Android instance.
Project Latte's proposal is that application developers package and distribute their applications in MSIX format, Microsoft's big bet to unify the various installation systems currently in place and, incidentally, to attract more developers to bring their creations to the market. Windows 10. And although the ecosystem of applications for Windows is still huge, in recent years developer interest has shifted in that order to iOS, Android and the web. And the best example of this is the “rare” offer that we can find in the Microsoft Store.
To make this possible, Project Latte is based on the development of an Android subsystem which, in turn, would be based on the Linux subsystem already present in Windows 10 for some time. In this way, developers would hardly have to apply 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 depend on certain Google services (since these are taken for granted on Android devices), which won't be present on Windows. Thus, application developers who wish to bring their applications to Windows will have to take this limitation into account, either to abandon certain functions or to look for alternatives available under Windows.
Another aspect that is not yet very clear is whether the versions of Android applications that arrive on 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 n any source, as is. already the case with other installation formats compatible with Microsoft's operating system. If Redmond decides to funnel all of the upcoming Android apps to Windows 10 through the App Store, it could be a boost for the Windows Online App Store.