Windows Central is now hearing from multiple sources that Project Astoria is on hold indefinitely, and maybe even shelved completely. Although Microsoft is not publicly – even privately – stating Astoria is cancelled, they are not openly talking about it anymore, or even privately discussing it with developers.
One source has told us that “the Android app porting is not going as planned.”
The interpretation by others familiar with the matter is that Astoria is not happening anytime soon and Microsoft has yet to find a way to announce the news publicly. Indeed, while the news will be welcomed by Windows developers, it could come across as a failure by the company to execute on a publicly announced strategy.
All evidence is pointing towards the Android application support promised for Windows 10 being axed.
The good news is that Islandwood is on track and works quite well. We are going to use it to bring applications to the Windows Phone ( something we would not have considered previously because the marketshare is so low ).
Indeed this may be what the Windows Phone needs to get the applications is so desperately required to be a viable platform.
It’s not happening. WP is a terminal state patient right now.
This project was probably axed because MS is not investing in WP anymore.
Which is quite sad if it happens.
The OS is actually quite good and the only viable alternative to Android in countries where only riches can get hold of iOS devices.
The development tools, in typical Microsoft fashion are also the best from all mobile SDKs currently available..
They are still investing. It’s just that they lost the train. Project Astoria could have succeeded in 2010 or so. Now, you have so many apps relying on Play Services on some way, and the Play Store being so dominant in the Android apps ecosystem it just can’t happen.
Also, it would be embarrassing if MS actually released their Android emulator, and very few apps put their ported apps in the Windows Store, which means users will have to sideload apks, a not-well-known procedure due to the presence of the PlayStore.
At least with win32, if you get the API compatibility to work (aka the Wine Platinum lists), the app works. All dominant “mobile” APIs are tied to services and Stores.
Google is doing to Microsoft what Microsoft did to everybody else in the 90s, in a much more effective way.
Edited 2015-11-15 00:31 UTC
No, that was not the reason; neither was it cost, legal issues, or technical problems ( although these did contribute certainly, and may be ultimately used as Microsofts justification ).
It was actually for exactly the reason you articulated that Microsoft shut this down. Windows Phone is not competing with iOS. Apples entire business is now driven, and arguably dependent on, an affluent class of consumers which effectively limits it’s reach. Android, on the other hand, effectively dominates the mass market and if Google successfully translates it to the desktop that will be a huge huge problem for Microsoft.
By encouraging developers to port their iOS applications Microsoft will get many of the applications it needs quickly and easily shifting from iOS first then Android to iOS/Windows first then Android which not only supports Windows but also keeps Android from being a primary development target. In contrast if Microsoft kept this program Windows wouldn’t even be part of developers equation and it would give them that much reason to be ‘Android first’ as the sum total of android target devices would be greater.
That makes no sense because:
a) this project would also make Android Apps run on regular Windows and they are surely investing there.
b) the iOS project has not been axed so apparently they are still investing.
I think the Android project was extremely ambitious. They basically wanted to make a runtime that would intercept all calls to anything Googely and replace it with something Microsofty (Bing Maps instead of Google Maps, but also payements, etc). There is no doubt that they had the runtime part working. They may even have gotten the call-interception part working…and then came the political and legal issues which have made this project fall flat. (Android uses the Apache license that includes a patent-grant clause: http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
…given perhaps to some licensing or some infringement of some kind. Perhaps Google and Microsoft are burying the hatchet and Google will create windows phone apps for their platform.
LOL, ah who am I kidding? This is terrible news.
Compared to “Islandwood”, “Project Astoria” has probably always been the more futile and expendable of the two. As far as my understanding goes, “Project Astoria” apps do not translate to natively-compiled code (differently from “Islandwood”) but somehow rely on a VM-based execution system, and if I am not mistaken, the amount of apps coded for iOS normally exceeds the amount of apps available for Android (i.e. WP only needs to equal the iOS app store without caring about the other).
tl;dr: nothing relevant here, move along!
Well yes, this is a story about Windows Phone, after all.
I am really struck by the balanced tone of your reply, and the abundance of technical data you reference to make it so sound.
But after all, you are probably right. [/PoliticalCorrectness] Had the article been about that maternal figure of yours, the relevance of userbase data to discuss here would have been prodigious instead… >-D
which of the many manufacturor-specific APIs to emulate. Google? Samsung? LG? Motorola?
Thinking about it, would Microsoft like WP Android apps pointing people to the Android Store for app purchases – where MS won’t get a dime from.. or the adverts from Googles servers… where MS won’t get a dime…
I’ll personally be lining up for a Windows 10 phone ( Okay, lining up maybe a bit of a misnomer since it’ll be a one-man line in all likelihood ) and I’ll also say the WP phones are rock solid in reliability and do have pretty much all the features you need.. and apps.
Remember that Microsoft is getting $15 per Android device sold. It is well known that they are getting more incomes from their “tax” than their own brands.
I don’t think it is anywhere near $15 and also this source of income is increasingly going away.
Remember how Samsung simply stopped paying them and Microsoft settled to license their patents in exchange for preinstalling Office apps.
But even when Samsung was still paying, the amount owed was $1 billion for 311.4M (mostly Android) smartphones in 2013.
I would gladly accept that “little” billion.
Project Astoria aims to be something like Nokia’s Android phones, but implemented on WP, aka the android API tied to MS services. Problem is, it’s too late for that.
Nah, It would be AOSP Andriod, not Google Android with Play Store, Services & what have you. Google doesn’t allow distribution of Play services/store. It would be like Blackberry’s old Android support.
In my point of view, Microsoft believes that their Universal applications and Continuum is so sexy, they don’t need half baked solution (remember BlackBerry abandoned Android apps support in the past and now they have native Android Priv). And I think that Microsoft has working Intel/x86 phones already for internal testing phase (Lumias for the 2016 year). The idea of one platform for all is still alive inside Microsoft (even Windows 8 failure and Windows 10 take-off troubles).
Edited 2015-11-15 18:24 UTC
I wonder if it has anything to do with the old J++ lawsuit settlement. Microsoft got screwed into the ground for licensing Java, then trying to tie Java to windows.
I wonder if there is an obscure clause in the settlement that says something like ” we will always only ever use Official Sun Java in a way that Sun approves of, never creating or using any kind of derivative.”
Or possibly, they realized that all Android Emulation isn’t that useful without the Play services.
You could be misremembering that part of history, if you think MS was the victim.
I didn’t mean to imply that Microsoft was the victim. Just meant to imply that Microsoft justly paid a steep price for violating their contract with Sun.
If there are legal reasons they don’t have anything to do with Sun/Oracle. Android’s Java is not called Java, and not licensed from Sun/Oracle.
That’s the point. Its not blessed by Sun/Oracle. If it was, there would be no potential legal issue between Sun/Oracle and Microsoft. I’m guessing that precisely because its not blessed by Sun/Oracle, that MS could be in trouble if they did use it.
Microsoft’s problems with J++ were precisely that they licensed Java from Sun but then proceeded to breach the terms by introducing incompatibilities.
Google for that reason (among others) avoided Sun so they could not be forced to maintain compatibility.
I think we’re talking past each other, but agreeing on the facts.
But one more fact: Obviously avoiding official Java didn’t help prevent Google from being sued. Oracle would sue its own grandmother, if it thought it would help Ellison buy another Hawaiian Island.
The Open Handset Alliance’s statutes prevent any manufacturer of Android devices that come with Google Services to ship non-conformant forks of AOSP code.
Probably Microsoft couldn’t implement Project Astoria without importing code from AOSP. This would mean any Smartphone vendor would have to decide between Windows Phone and (official) Android.
Second reason may be that Astoria uses a separate NT kernel subsystem, which means duplication of many system libraries etc. which would increase memory pressure and not be viable on 512 MB RAM devices, and even on 1 GB it could be tight.
About Islandwood I am interested in how well they will be able to follow Apple’s new APIs like Metal. I assume it will not be easy to translate Metal code written to PowerVR GPUs to DX12 running on Adreno GPUs. Therefore I am still cautious on whether this will work out for demanding games.
BINGO! That also makes a ton of sense.
There really aren’t many if all third party windows phone makers. MS probably wants to eventually change that, and wouldn’t be able to if they did this.