Google’s Fuchsia OS Launching With Native Support For Android Apps?

There’s now reason to believe that Google’s mysterious Fuchsia OS will have support for Android apps. Apparently, developers have uncovered data that suggest the upcoming operating system will be able to run Android apps.

Earlier this week, XDA Developers editor-in-chief Mishaal Rahman took to Twitter to reveal the latest discovery they made. According to Rahman, the highly anticipated Fuchsia OS has showed up in the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and in the Android Runtime (ART) branch. He also noted how Google appears to be building the operating system with ART, which means Fuchsia could have native support for Android apps.

Android is undeniably the most used computing platform at present due to the fact that it is based on open source Linux code. Hence, anyone can download Android and configure it to run on a certain device. However, Google’s Fuchsia OS is not based on Linux. The Mountain View giant built the operating system from scratch with a new microkernel called Zircon, which was formerly referred to as Magenta.

The problem with making Fuchsia OS from scratch is it does not have an app catalog to make it stand out and attractive to consumers. Knowing that this would be a big problem when it’s time for Fuchsia OS to debut, Google appears to have found the perfect solution, which is to make Fuchsia capable of natively running Android apps, according to ExtremeTech.

SlashGear reports that Google could be making Fuchsia an operating system solely for its own manufactured products. This means Google could be introducing Fuchsia OS to the public when it starts releasing new in-house developed hardware. Google is still mum on this though and it hasn’t really commented on reports about Fuchsia, so it’s hard to tell what the new OS is all about as of now.

There’s no information about the release date of Fuchsia OS. It is believed that the project is still in an early phase, so it’s possible that Google could still kill it off, merge it into something else or even repurpose it for non-consumer applications. Nevertheless, many are hopeful that Google will be talking about Fuchsia OS and reveal more details about it soon. The annual I/O developer conference is scheduled to happen from May 9–11. It’s possible that Google will talk about Fuchsia OS at the event.