In a blog post a couple of days ago, Amazon officially announced that it is working on bringing support for Google’s Android App Bundle format (.aab) to its own app store. What does this have to do with Windows 11? Allow us to catch you up.
Exactly 26 days ago, Microsoft unveiled Windows 11. One of the stand-out features was the fact that, through the Amazon App Store, you would be able to run Android apps directly in Windows.
Many people questioned the move to use the Amazon App Store instead of Google’s Play Store, with some speculating that this could be Microsoft trying to move in on market share held by Chromebooks.
Not long after Microsoft’s event, Google announced that it would be moving away from the Android Package format (.apk) in favour of its new .aab format, which begged the question of what this means for Android apps on Windows 11.
Amazon to the rescue?
Now, with Amazon working on bringing .aab support to its app store, it will be interesting to see if the flexibility that many people have come to expect from the Android ecosystem will translate over to Windows 11. Most notably, the ability to load apps from places outside of the officially supported avenues.
Amazon’s approach to the .aab format is going to be a little different from Google’s, however. While Google will still support existing apps using the .apk format (for now), apps published after 1 August will need to use the new .aab format. Whereas Amazon will offer developers support for both formats.
Unfortunately, the current Windows 11 beta preview doesn’t support Android app functionality just yet so we’ll probably have to wait for the full release of the OS, which should start rolling out in October of this year.