Company does Microsoft's job, attempts to bring Android runtime to Windows

Mechdome is a company which provides a service which converts Android apps to iOS apps without access to the source code.

They aim to help developers no longer think of Android and iOS as separate platforms requiring different development approaches, and now their twitter account has teased the same service for Windows, allowing developers to easily bring their Android apps to Windows 10.

Android apps are coming to Windows. You will be able to convert Android apps to run natively on Windows. pic.twitter.com/d2r5CcPwAP

— MechDome (@mech_dome) January 24, 2018

They offer an API translation service, and in one of their videos they show an Android app sending a Windows notification and opening the Edge browser.

Android apps will automatically use Windows Notifications and open the Edge browser when running on Windows 10 pic.twitter.com/tgc9ZNJsRO

— MechDome (@mech_dome) February 1, 2018

Android is currently the largest operating system in the world, with more than 2 billion users. At one point Microsoft was working on an Android emulator for Windows 10 Mobile, but in the end abandoned that effort. Unfortunately, with the growing app gap, most Windows users are forced to access services by web browser, which often does not offer all the features an app would.

API translation tends to be much faster than emulating a whole operating system, but is often less complete, so their approach will not be a silver bullet when it does arrive. Microsoft could certainly do it better, and I think it is time for the company to acknowledge that Windows is by far no longer the leading developer platform, and give Windows users access to the apps they are already running on their phones.

Mechdome’s website, which currently only offers the Android to iOS service, can be seen here.