How To Run Android Apps on Your Windows PC

Earlier this year, I discovered an interesting company called BlueStacks that has an Android app player for Windows. And when I say I discovered it, I mean it moved into the office next to mine. Discovering the company was pretty easy.

I had actually heard about BlueStacks from some of my OEM clients who were quite excited about what the company had shown them. So I met with the company and also became quite interested in its technology.

It turns out that BlueStacks is one of those gems that early stage investors love. So far, it has been backed by Andreeson Horowitz, Redpoint, Ignition Partners, Radar, and Helion (Jeff Bezos' VC fund), with strategic investments coming from AMD, Citrix, and two others who are not public yet.

The CEO and founder, Rosen Sharma, is a veteran of many tech startups. He realized that many Android users would really like to have their Android apps on their PC. So he set out to create a technology that would virtualize Android on Windows. People could take apps from their Android devices and send them via a piece of software downloaded on to their device called directly to the BlueStacks player on a Windows PC.

When a user goes through this simple procedure, Android apps just show up in the BlueStacks Player on Windows. Like magic, they run on Windows as is, in full screen, with no performance degradation. That means software written for Android, such as Pulse and Flipboard, can now run on your Windows PC and be tied to the data layer of your Android version, too.

Although BlueStacks has a "Get More Apps" section built into the player itself, most of the ones there now are just to demonstrate what can be done. In actuality, people will just download Android apps from the Android Marketplace or Amazon's Appstore for Android and then use Cloud Connect to transfer them to a Windows PC.

The program is in Alpha now, but it is pretty solid even in this state. It has a lot of new features and enhancements planned that would give the program even more functionality. To be honest, though, just having my Android apps on my PC is already a good reason to try it out. Not to mention, it's free. I do believe that BlueStacks will eventually offer some premium services and apps for purchase. From what I can tell, though, most of what it offers will be free to users when it comes to running almost all of their Android apps on their Windows PC.

What BlueStacks is doing is strategic and important to the overall PC marketplace. In fact, I believe that BlueStacks is actually laying the groundwork for the future of the PC-to-smartphone experience.

Think about your use of your apps on your smartphone or tablet today. How many times have you thought, “I wish I had that same app on my PC?” The reason you may be saying that is because so many of the apps written for a smartphone or tablet are compact, concise, and deliver just the function you need at the time you need it. For example, when traveling, I often use a currency converter. To get that same function on a PC, I have to go to a website and find that convertor. Even if I bookmark it, it takes at least two or three more clicks to get the information I really want. On the other hand, on my or , I just tap the currency convertor app and I am ready to go.

Also, if you use apps like or , which are designed for a tablet, having that same kind of app functionality on the PC is cool as well.

I find that there are some great note taking apps for tablets and smartphones that I would like on my PC, like . While it has a web version, it also has versions for Android, iOS and Windows. Each is a dedicated app that can be launched for fast access and look and work the same on all devices.

Now, in a perfect world, everyone who creates a smartphone app or a tablet app would also go the extra mile and create a dedicated app for the PC, as well. Well, we all know the world is not perfect. But Bluestacks’ virtual program literally takes those Android smartphone or tablet apps and puts them on a PC so they can be used the same way. Although apps could deliver a similar approach to cross device apps, it simply flops on smaller screens.

Interestingly, Apple has already seen the need for something like this, although its approach is a little different. It has apps for iOS and now it has apps directly for OSX through the Mac App store. However, at the moment, the apps on iOS and the apps in the Mac Store, at least in most cases, are not the same. It is only a matter of time before Apple pushes developers down a path in which both apps should look the same and work the same way, whether they are on the iPhone, iPad or the Mac.

To that end, BlueStacks actually gives the Android crowd that cross device functionality already and puts the Android and Windows crowd a step ahead of Apple. I have no doubt that Apple understands this trend and will soon merge the two app development platforms into a single one. Eventually, most, if not all, of its iOS apps will look and work the same on the iPhone, iPad and Macs.

As for Microsoft, I'm uncertain if it even understands this concept and I currently see no move to make any Win Mobile 6.5 apps on a Windows PC. Given the fact that there are 200,000 plus Android apps already, it may not matter, since BlueStacks makes all of those work out of the box today.

So, if you have an Android phone or tablet and a Windows PC, check out BlueStacks. In doing so, you just might get a glimpse of what the future of cross device apps will look like and how this could be a blueprint for the future of personal computing.