Microsoft Confirms That Current Windows Phone Apps Will Run On Windows Phone 8

This is not the first time Microsoft has confirmed about the app compatibility on Windows Phone 8, but Microsoft again mentioned about it today. When discussing about the Windows 8 and current Windows Phone development opportunities Microsoft blogged the following,

With regard to existing applications: today’s Windows Phone applications and games will run on the next major version of Windows Phone. Driving application compatibility is a function of Microsoft’s commitment to its developers. Regardless of what we release in terms of new developer features and functionality, we have made a large investment in protecting your existing investments.

Microsoft also discussed about the Silverlight development platform,

We’ve also heard some developers express concern about the long term future of Silverlight for Windows Phone. Please don’t panic; XAML and C#/VB.NET development in Windows 8 can be viewed as a direct evolution from today’s Silverlight. All of your managed programming skills are transferrable to building applications for Windows 8, and in many cases, much of your code will be transferrable as well. Note that when targeting a tablet vs. a phone, you do of course, need to design user experiences that are appropriately tailored to each device.

My prediction is that, Windows Phone 8 development platform will be made similar to Windows 8. You can write the code behind using either C# or C++ or whatever and the UI will be based on WinRT. As an extra effort, Microsoft will also provide an environment that will allow existing Windows Phone 7 apps to run on new Windows Phone 8 platform without any changes. Read more on this here.