Brandon Watson squashes rumours that Windows Phone 7 apps will be incompatible with Windows Phone 8

The rumour that Windows Phone 8 will see a kernel transplant to the Windows 8 kernel is very strong, but accompanying that rumour is a second, connected one – that Windows Phone 8 will move to HTML5 and DirectX based apps, and that current Silverlight and XNA-based apps will be incompatible.

One proponent of the rumour is Eldar Murtazin, who tweeted:

eldarmurtazin Eldar Murtazin

WP8 os isnt compatible with wp7 on app level (u need to rewrite all apps). Thats another os core with metro ui…

Brandon Watson in a tweet made is pretty clear that this will not be the case, saying:

@eldarmurtazin Rewatch Mix11 keynote. We were pretty clear on this. Any app built today will run on next major Windows Phone version.

The news should reassure developers that all their effort will not be wasted when the next generation of Windows Phones come, and help continue the momentum of Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, which has added nearly 10000 apps this month so far.

It should also cast doubt on Eldar’s reliability, who’s anti-Windows Phone/Nokia utterings seems to be taken as fact these days.