BlueStacks on Tuesday announced the availability of its Android “App Player” for the Surface Pro tablet and other Windows 8 devices. The announcement comes a little over a year after the company first announced that it was working on bringing its popular program, which gives users access to more than 750,000 Android apps, to Microsoft’s (MSFT) latest operating system.
“We’ve had our users asking for a Win8 version for a long time,” said BlueStacks CEO Rosen Sharma. “Now that it’s finally available on our website we’re looking forward to getting feedback and building on the experience. The number of mobile apps being written overall is expanding exponentially and Microsoft has not added apps to the handful it has. Our goal is to get people more value out of their Surface Pro and Win8 devices.”
BlueStacks App Player has been downloaded more than 5 million times across OS X and Windows. The company recently announced several new OEM partnerships that will see its App Player preloaded on more than 100 million PCs in 2013.
“The response in the OEM community has been as strong or stronger than the surprising numbers we’ve been seeing from organic downloads,” said BlueStacks head of Global Sales and Strategic Alliances, Apu Kumar. “We seem to have reached a tipping point where we’ve brought mobile apps to so many computers worldwide, the remaining OEM’s customers are asking for these apps also. We’re the perfect conduit to get popular programs back on the PC.”
The BlueStacks Android App Player is free to download and available now on the company’s website.
BlueStacks’ press release follows below.
BlueStacks Releases Surface Pro-Optimized Version of “App Player”
Announces GetYourAppsBack.com to fill widening Win8 App Gap
Campbell, CA February 12, 2013 – Mobile company BlueStacks today released a Surface Pro-optimized, officially supported Windows 8 version of its popular App Player software. The program is free to download and can run any Android app on the new Surface Pro. BlueStacks also announced a new site: GetYourAppsBack.com where new Windows 8 and Surface Pro users can download BlueStacks’ software and bring any mobile apps to their device. Recently, Google launched a Get Your Google Back video campaign that BlueStacks is paying homage to.
“We’ve had our users asking for a Win8 version for a long time,” said BlueStacks CEO Rosen Sharma. “Now that it’s finally available on our website we’re looking forward to getting feedback and building on the experience. The number of mobile apps being written overall is expanding exponentially and Microsoft has not added apps to the handful it has. Our goal is to get people more value out of their Surface Pro and Win8 devices.”
Having announced several OEM partnerships in recent months, BlueStacks also recently passed 5 million downloads of its mobile software across Mac and PC. The downloads all came from the company’s homepage, BlueStacks.com. Additional download numbers via OEM partnerships have not been released, though the company says they are healthy.
“The response in the OEM community has been as strong or stronger than the surprising numbers we’ve been seeing from organic downloads,” said BlueStacks head of Global Sales and Strategic Alliances, Apu Kumar. “We seem to have reached a tipping point where we’ve brought mobile apps to so many computers worldwide, the remaining OEM’s customers are asking for these apps also. We’re the perfect conduit to get popular programs back on the PC.”
The company’s site at GetYourAppsBack.com allows new Surface Pro and Win8 PC owners to get apps from their phone and any additional apps they want into their Win8 PC, running them fullscreen and touch-enabled. The site went live today.
