Windows 8 to support Win 7 apps?

Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO Nvidia, has made a statement regarding Windows 8 during a roundtable with reporters.  He speculated that Windows 8 might be able to run Windows Phone 7 applications. Till now Microsoft has not made any kind of comments so it is unclear if he was only speculating or sharing some inside information.

If Windows 8 can run applications made in Windows phone 7, it would really be a great boost for the tablet side of Microsoft’s upcoming operating system. As Microsoft has already mentioned before that Windows 8 operating system’s tablet interface will act as a second OS. All traditional windows interface will be present along with applications for the tablet side providing a different look and feel.

Not producing from the scratch and producing newer applications that are not available on Windows 7, will definitely be a boost for the developers as well as the company as there are about 30,000 Windows phone applications. As both the OS uses Microsoft’s “Metro” user interface so there should not be much problem to try using those applications regarding the interface.

With all these different kind of positive aspects there is also one potential issue with bringing Windows Phone applications into Windows 8. As Huang noted, Windows Phone apps were written for ARM based processors this could create a divide where different devices support different applications as Windows 8 will support both ARM and x86 processors.

Next week Microsoft holds a conference for developers and media regarding some details on Windows 8, so some of the answers can be expected.

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