Universal Apps – A step in the right direction

It’s been a fairly long time since Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 made their debut, but they have yet to capture a decent marketshare. This is not because of the Operating System (OS) being bad or lack of devices, rather the slow adoption rate is caused by the ‘app gap’. This tag has plagued the mobile and tablet Windows OS since their launch and Microsoft has tried various tactics to get rid of it such as providing initiatives to developers, partnering with various publishers and the latest scheme called ‘Universal Apps’. These schemes are a more of a developer thing and generally go unnoticed by the consumers. The latest trump card played by Microsoft is ‘Universal Apps’ and it feels like a step in right direction.

What are Universal Apps ?

Most of you are wondering what Universal Apps are and why you should care about them. To understand the concept behind Universal Apps, you need to know about Microsoft’s vision of the modern OS. With the launch of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, Microsoft proposed the idea of a common interface for all your devices. To achieve this, Microsoft made both the OSs share a common architecture, this led to many benefits for consumers as well as developers. The consumer would now be easily able to migrate from different devices since they will have a similar UI, while developers will be able to unify the design for their applications.

First announced at Build 2014, Universal Apps allowed developers to code once and run their application on Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 with a litlle bit optimization for devices having different form factors. The basic ideology followed by Microsoft for Universal Apps is to develop once for all Windows devices using a unified Windows runtime and VS tools that allow you to support experiences unique to a device in XAML, HTML and DirectX, as well as share the code that supports those experiences across all devices using C++, C# or JavaScript. When your work is finished you can compile the app packages that you will submit to the Windows Store and Windows Phone Store with a single action and get your app out to customers on any Windows device. For those asking for numbers, Microsoft says that developers will be able to share 90-95% of their code depending on the design of the app.

A Developer’s Perspective and Benefits for the Consumers

This is a big aid for existing Windows Developers and for those who are looking to develop for the platform for the first time. To illustrate the idea, consider a developer who is developing a Windows Phone app. Earlier they spent nearly 4-6 months working on the application for Windows Phone and afterwards if they decided to release their app for Windows 8 PCs they would need to spend another 2-3 months porting their app. Now things will be different for them as they will be able to develop an app for both the platforms within the same time frame it took them to develop a Windows Phone app, and then they can utilize the time which was earlier spent in porting the app for updates based on user feedback as well as more content.

All this comes at a cost however. While Microsoft has simplified the development process, they also force the developer to make their app with a shared identity, which means if a user purchases an app from the Windows Store, they own it on the Windows Phone Store as well by using the same Microsoft account. Optionally, this can also include things like in-app purchases. You might think this is a monetary disadvantage for the developers but one should consider the benefits of saved time and increased user install base. For example, if we have two brand new shooters available in the Windows Store and one of them is a Universal App while the other one is not, and there is user who is trying to choose which one to buy. Now, if both the games have a decent amount of content and they meet the industry standards, the user might be more inclined to purchase the game which is a ‘Universal App’ because it has more value for him. Of course, it applies to only those that have both Windows and Windows Phone which seems to be the only problem with this scheme. The adoption rate for these OSs has been very slow and while the low end Windows Phone is doing very well, overall Windows Phone only has 3-4% market share. Windows 8 for that matter, has sold millions of units, but they are still much lesser than its predecessors. Even if a developer makes a Universal App they need to consider the potential market offered by Microsft’s OSs and various other factors.

Universal Apps has ahuge list of benefits and its drawbacks simply pale in front of them. Moreover, looking at the Windows Store tells us that many developers are now focused on making Universal Apps, with big publishers like Gameloft going that way with their recent release of Modern Combat 5. The big publishers like Gameloft, Ubisoft, EA, etc. are the biggest beneficiaries of this scheme as development costs are rising, and by unifying the development process for Windows and Windows Phone, Microsoft has helped them reduce the porting cost of big budget games. The small developers will also be able to aim at a bigger audience while saving time and costs.