BlueStacks Launch is Big News for Windows 8 Users – Breaking Analysis
BlueStacks, the startup behind the platform of the same name that lets you run Android apps on other systems, added support for Windows 8 this week.
The launch of App Player for Surface Pro is big news for Windows 8 users, who can now access 750,000 plus Android applications from their PCs and mobile devices. Before the launch, the latter group could only run the 35,000 or so native apps currently available in the Windows 8 store.
“Microsoft’s app market has been hindered a little bit because of some confusion around Windows RT vs. Windows 8,” 1610 Group founder Scott Lowe told SiliconAngle this morning during an appearance on our NewsDesk show (full video below). The app market for Microsoft is nowhere near what we’ve seen for either iOS or Android device.”
BlueStacks is replicating the success of the Wine compatibility framework for Unix in the mobile space, only on a much bigger scale. The young startup recently announced that it has signed an agreement with Lenovo to preinstall its software on the Idea line of PCs, one of the manufacturers’ fastest growing product families.
“As the PC market leader and a growing smartphone maker in China, it’s huge that Lenovo is implementing our vision of creating a blended experience across smartphones, tablets and PCs,” said Rosen Sharma, CEO of BlueStacks. “Consumers want access to all of their apps across all devices. Artificial barriers and silo-ed ecosystems have long been a source of confusion and frustration. The digital world is a celebration of heterogeneous devices.”
BlueStacks, which is available for Mac and all versions of Windows higher than and including XP, is expected to be preloaded on 100 million devices in 2013. That’s not all thanks to Lenovo, mind you – the company maintains strong relations with a number of other hardware vendors including AMD, Asus and MSI. TechCrunch reported on Tuesday that BlackStacks is negotiating similar agreements with Dell and HP, but we were not able to confirm the rumor.
For more analysis from Lowe, see the full clip below:
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