At its Windows 11 event on Thursday, Microsoft announced that the next version of Windows and the new Microsoft Store will have built-in support for Android apps, available from the Microsoft Store through a partnership with Amazon's Android app store.

"It can be integrated into the Start screen. It can also be integrated into the taskbar. These apps can be found from the Microsoft Store using the Amazon app store," said Panos Panay, Microsoft's chief product officer. The video showed Android apps opening, closing, and snapping to parts of the screen just like any other Windows app.

Panay said that Android apps run on Windows thanks to "Intel Bridge" technology. In a press release, Intel describes Bridge as "a runtime post-compiler that enables applications to run natively on x86-based devices, including running applications on Windows. Some of you may have your eyes darted as soon as you saw the word "runtime," but the bottom line is that Bridge converts your Android app code into code that a PC can understand, without you or your app developer having to do anything. [We tried to provide developers with a way to rebuild their apps for Windows 10, but that implementation never got off the ground. Native OS support is definitely better for both developers and users, giving Windows 11 the ability to rival Apple's new M1 laptop, which can run both Mac OS and iOS apps.

The partnership with Amazon is an interesting solution, but it suggests that either Google did not want to integrate its Android store into Windows 11 or Microsoft did not want to work directly with Google. Amazon's app store has a smaller subset of apps than Google's, but still has most of the common apps that people use on a daily basis.