Last month, Research In Motion RIM, introduced an Android player for the Playbook. The Player would enable ported Android apps to run on the Playbook.
Before that, Windows phone team created a tool to help iOS developers port their Iphone apps to Windows Phone 7. Last week, Microsoft Windows did the same, but this time for Android.
Microsoft software team introduced a new API tool, mapping Android API functions to the equivalent API in the Windows Phone platform. Unfortunately there is no automatic portable that would allow you to just port an Android app to the Windows Phone. Both platforms are just too different. In order to help developers, this translation map guide should help Android developers find the equivalent API function in the Windows Phone library.
At the moment, Microsoft Apps library is lagging behind Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Market in terms of numbers. The Windows Phone Marketplace have an estimated 20,000 apps whereas Apple and Android have over 200,000 apps available.
With these tools, Microsoft is looking at seriously attracting Android and iOS developers alike to create and port their software to Windows Phone. We’ll just have to see how the market reacts to Windows Phone.
Source
– Leveraging your Android development expertise to build Windows Phone applications
