SYDNEY: Stephen Elop, the executive vice-president of Microsoft’s devices and services business, in charge of dragging Microsoft into the Smartphone era has said “With Windows 10 we are very focused on bringing together all of the different form factors phones, PCs, tablets, even large-format displays under a common set of code, a common operating system, a common development environment, and deliver to developers one coherent ecosystem that’s very large in size,”
With Windows 10 the version due sometime this year creating a uniform platform across PCs, tablets and mobile phones, so that apps written for one type of device will work on others, Microsoft is putting all its eggs in one basket.
The strategy is to use the presumably huge installed base of Windows 10 PCs Microsoft has announced existing Windows 7 and Windows 8 users will be able to upgrade to Windows 10 free of charge as a carrot for third-party developers, who will find themselves developing Windows Phone 10 apps almost without trying, thereby helping Windows Phone to compete with Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android for breadth and depth of offerings in the app store.
