Microsoft aims for easier porting of iOS, Android apps onto Windows 10

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Microsoft just made its plans clear for developers to move their apps on other platforms over to Windows 10 and into the Microsoft Store, helping to flesh out the company’s third-party software offering from the off.

At its Build 2015 developers conference today, Operating Systems Group President Terry Myerson announced that Microsoft has created a path for developers to take Android Java/C++ code and move it over to Windows Phone. Android developers will be able to take their apps written in Java or C++, submit them to the Windows Store as APKs and have them work on Windows 10 devices.

Read more

• Here’s how Microsoft hopes to get Android and iOS phone apps into its Windows 10 Store
• 4 new things we learned about Windows 10 from Microsoft Build 2015

Myerson also said the capability to compile Objective-C code, the primary language for Apple’s iOS platform, will be available. Using Visual Studio Code, developers can use the iOS code compiled in Xcode to create apps for Windows 10.

Along with these two key tools, Microsoft showed off how developers will be able to take websites and quickly turn them into Web apps for the Microsoft Store. Myerson demonstrated this by showing how music site 22Tracks with all of its dynamic features could be wrapped and turned into an app complete with in-app purchasing.

Myerson also said .Net and Win32 apps will be available in the Windows Store — things that currently are not available for direct purchase — and used as an example the availability of Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements.

These four tools are part of Microsoft’s strategy to bring all devices under one OS.