How Will Android Apps Work on Windows 11?

With the news that Android applications will be available on Windows 11, users can expect to find Android apps available for download… with a few terms and conditions to apply. Let’s look at how this integration is poised to be shaped, and why it may not be all that it is cracked up to be.

How Android Apps Will Be Available on Windows

Rather than relying on a version of the Google Play Store that has been optimized for Windows, Android applications will be available on Windows through the app store maintained by Amazon. This arrangement brings a few challenges with it, however.

For one, Amazon’s Appstore offers remarkably few apps compared to the other marketplaces. What’s worse, this lack of apps is particularly apparent when it comes to the productivity-based software you’d expect to find. Naturally, there aren’t any of Google’s applications, and many of the famous business applications like Trello, Slack, and Asana are missing. LastPass, 1Password, and Bitwarden are also absent as far as password management solutions are concerned. Many Microsoft programs don’t appear either… while Outlook, the all-in-one version of Office, and OneNote are there, others aren’t. Major banking applications aren’t there.

Exacerbating this issue is the fact that many of the apps available aren’t properly maintained, far outdated compared to the versions present on the Play Store.

Why Is This the Case?

The root of all of these issues is Google Play Services, a key component to many of an application’s operations. Google Play Services is what enables an application to handle purchases, use location data, push notifications, and various other functions.

Naturally, this makes Google Play Services critical to the functionality of Android applications, meaning that they have to be incorporated into the application… and this is precisely what makes applications so challenging to host on more than one app store, and why so many titles are missing from Amazon’s. A developer effectively has to reinvent the wheel to put the same application on Amazon’s Appstore. Otherwise, the application breaks. 

So, with developers simply not focusing their efforts on optimizing their applications for all platforms, these deficits are going to be reflected in the applications available on Windows 11.

Will this change? Perhaps, provided that app developers focus on making their applications available through Amazon’s Appstore. In the meantime, you can count on OnSite I.T. to equip your team members with the tools they need to function efficiently. Give us a call at (403) 210-2927 to learn more.