Microsoft gets the Indian developer community ready for Windows 8

Over 200 hundred developers are camping for two days in Mumbai for a hackathon

Over 200 hundred developers from across India have camped up for two days at a hotel in South Mumbai for a Windows 8 hackathon. This is the first time that the Indian developer community is getting into the hack mode for Windows 8.

As the launch of Windows 8 comes closer, Microsoft is making sure that the developer community is ready with applications, as it will also launch its Store and Market Place. And for this getting the Indian developer community on board will be significant.

“India is an incredible bastion of software developer. On a global scale about 25-30 per cent of all the software codes written in the world are written by Indian developers. Certainly galvanising the developer community in India to see the possibility and re-imagine Windows 8 and build next generation businesses is important,” said Steve Ballmer, CEO Microsoft Corporation via a video at the Microsoft India Technology Summit.

Ballmer also reiterated that the launch of Windows 8 is a ‘rebirth’ of the company and will be one of the biggest days in its history. “While Windows 7 was one of the best products, with Windows 8 we are re-imagining Windows from ground up,” he said.

Windows 8 will work across platforms and screens and support a variety of products and applications. It will support both touch and keyboard and mouse.

For Microsoft Windows 8’s success on the mobile and tablet front will be crucial as that market has been captured by Apple and Samsung. Ballmer said that Windows 7 has a installed base of close to 500 million and the company will ship 350 million systems with Windows 8.  

Windows 8 sports two modes — a Metro interface akin to what the company created for its Windows Phone platform and the other is the good old Windows desktop mode, needed by Microsoft for traditional applications like Office or for those PC users who need a familiar-looking Windows’ screen. The tiles — which we imagine will be perfect on a touchscreen tablet — integrate user’s data, contacts, email, messages, social media, etc and update them in real time so that you can see new emails, Facebook notifications, tweets, etc at a glance. If users do not like the new format, they can revert to the desktop style.