Microsoft to merge Windows Phone and Windows 8 app stores

At a company meeting today, Microsoft evidently let out news that the Windows Phone Store and Windows Store will be merged into a single app store. Terry Myserson who heads the operating systems group confirmed the news at an internal meeting. First reported by The Verge  and confirmed by our own sources, Myserson confirmed that the changes will appear over the next few releases of Windows and Windows Phone. The next major update for Windows is expected later this year called Windows 8.1.  A similar update for Windows Phone called Windows Phone 8.1 will follow it.

Microsoft is also believed to have shown off a cloud streaming demo. It is believed that Microsoft showed off a demo of Halo 4 running from the cloud on a device as basic as the Lumia 520 with a latency period of just under 45ms. This same demo was also spotted running on a low end Windows machine. If Microsoft manages to extend high end gaming capabilities across its tablet and smartphone platforms, it could be a major win for Redmond. An interesting implementation of having a common app store could be tablet specific apps running in a snapped mode on full fledged windows. We should  also expect to see Windows Phone apps running in pixel doubled mode. We’ll update this space as and when we hear more.