The code-sharing between the Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 operating systems is just the start of a long-term plan to merge the two into a universal OS, company cofounder and chairman Bill Gates has promised.
We're certainly sharing between Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 – sharing the user interface, sharing some of those development tools, and over time we'll just get to do more and more of that," he said in an in-house video. "It's evolving literally into being a single platform.
Having such a system dovetails neatly into Microsoft's cloud ambitions, he said, both in terms of storage and personalization across devices. This week's announcements covering the two operating systems, not to mention the Surface launch, shows the direction Redmond is moving into long-term, he explained.
Source: The Register