VMWare, a company well known for desktop OS virtualization–they deliver technologies to run Windows XP on a Mac or run a copy of Windows 98 on Windows XP and have both OSes run side by side, is hoping that the answer will be no. VMWare has effectively demonstrated smartphone operating system virtualization on a Windows Mobile handset, allowing Windows Phone to open and run Android applications. This will be beneficial to both consumers and developers.

As a consumer, you’ll save time and money looking for an application for one platform on another. Android users who migrate to Windows Mobile will feel right at home and can run the same Android applications, saving time and money in re-purchasing similar apps for different platforms. Developers can also save time in developing for the platform that they’re most comfortable with and know that those programs can be ported through the use of virtualization.

Virtualization is different from smartphones that offer dual-booting capabilities, as a few of those concepts already exist. Virtualization, unlike dual-booting methods, will allow you to run another OS environment natively inside your OS. For Windows Mobile, that means that you’ll still be in the Windows Mobile environment and can simultaneously access Windows Mobile Media Player while playing an Android game or using BlackBerry Messenger and juggling cards on a virtualized webOS.

Virtualization technology, although compelling, has been met with limited success. For a period of time, there was an effort to developing Java programs so that those programs would have ubiquitous access across various different platforms, including Windows Mobile, with a Java Virtual Machine program (essentially a similar paradigm that VMWare is proposing on the OS side). However, those efforts never really took off. BlackBerry, which had hoped to virtualize its OS on Windows Mobile to bring enhanced BlackBerry functionality beyond BlackBerry Connect, still hasn’t released its BlackBerry Applications Suite for Windows Mobile yet.

However, virtualization today is becoming more of a possible reality with larger, higher resolution screens, more device memory, and faster processors. Given the right hardware and software that takes advantage of advances in hardware and processing power, the possibilities are endless.

If successful, VMWare will truly bring the there’s an app for that paradigm for many phones and OSes.

(via: Mobile Marketing Watch)