Windows 10 Will Swallow Up Windows Phone

For the last few years, the trend within major tech companies is unifying their user interfaces into a single visual style across all devices. Both Apple and Google have made great strides in this, creating a single ‘look’ for all of their products, which aids both in ease of use, as well as market prominence. However, while Microsoft has been taking similar measures in the past, it is taking this concept to a whole new level with Windows 10.

Rather than just unifying the visual UI of the Windows Phone and Windows 10, the company has instead gone for a much more ground-breaking approach. Windows 10 is made to be fully scalable, able to be run not just on huge-screened desktops, laptops, and tablets, but also on smartphones too. Fundamentally, what this means is that Windows 10 is the first operating system which is both a smartphone and a desktop OS.

Image: © 2014 Microsoft

While Microsoft probably will not kill the Windows Phone 8 immediately and may even release a new version of the operating system in the next year or so, it is clear that the company plans to eventually have it absorbed into Windows 10.

In order to achieve this, Microsoft will need to find a way to make apps available on the Windows Phone Store able to function on larger screened Windows 10 devices. Indeed Microsoft has already begun this transition in recent months, creating a large number of apps and games which function both on touch-enabled Windows 8.1 computers, as well as on Windows Phone 8 smartphones.

Despite being somewhat difficult, this move makes sense, and indeed has several advantages. Firstly, Microsoft is able to leverage the large number of Desktop Windows users as a instant market for app developers, giving them much more incentive to create apps for the system. Secondly, the company will be able to implement a much greater level of cloud integration between individual devices, as they all will be using fundamentally the same software.