Today Microsoft posted on their developer blog about a new tool to make porting apps from Android devices to Windows Phone much easier. Much like what Microsoft did recently for iOS, the API tool is said to be like a translating dictionary for people that are native Android coders, and will help them to understand the Windows Phone 7 environment. Hopefully this means developers will be able to bring their useful applications to the platform and help Microsoft expand their Marketplace selection.
With the Android Market growing at a fast rate and currently housing over 150,000 apps, it’s smart of Microsoft to appeal to those developers. Recent polls show that developer interest for Android is above all other mobile OSes at 67%, while Windows Phone is second to last at 36% developer interest. This release means Microsoft can ride the Android wave by having a way for developers to easily move their software to WP7, and that should appeal to the thousands of coders out there.
While this news isn’t directly related to this story, during an interview with the channel 9 news, one of the major developers, Thomas Fennel talked about the popular live tile feature of the Windows Phone 7 OS. Throughout the interview, Tom talked about the live tile feature and how it was almost removed from the Windows Phone 7 feature list. Apparently the best feature of WP7 was almost removed in the Mango update, but rather, they realized what great potential this service has and ended up improving it. This move makes me question where Microsoft is really going with their OS; live tiles and instant information was the original selling point for the OS, so what would the end result look like without them?