Microsoft has announced support for ARM64 applications in its official store, the Microsoft Store. An exciting addition to enhancing the capabilities of the Windows 10 computers on ARM that the company markets in partnership with Qualcomm. Support has arrived with the release of Visual Studio 15.9, the new version of the development suite that includes a specific development kit and tools to create or convert from other formats these 64-bit ARM or ARM64 applications.
The possibilities are wide and developers will be able to create ARM64 applications by recompiling the existing universal UWP – the Win32 programmed in C++ and also the ARM32 that were already supported, but running by emulation. Microsoft says that performing the conversion will be very simple, at the click of a button.
Support For ARM64 Applications in Microsoft Store Is Fundamental For Sustaining Windows 10 on ARM
The partnership between Microsoft and Qualcomm to bring ARM architecture to the PC market with equipment that has the advantage of its total connection under the built-in mobile broadband modem LTE and a large autonomy taking advantage of the features of this RISC architecture.
The problem with this platform has been its low overall performance when running applications, emulated in Win32, the limitations and crashes of its Windows 10 S operating system and the lack of third-party applications from the Microsoft Store that kept a good part of developers away from this kind of devices.
On the other hand, there are hundreds of computers in the market with standard Windows 10, with Intel or AMD hardware, also connected by SIM cards, and with wide autonomy and in all price ranges, which run native applications without the need to emulate and without blocking other devs. Microsoft, however, knows that and now supports ARM64 applications on its official store to boost the popularity of its device with Windows 10 on ARM.