By 
Our friends at BlueStacks have announced that their App Player for PC, an app that allows you to run Android applications on your Windows desktop, is now available in beta form. The alpha, which ran late last year, was a very interesting release that showed us it’s possible to run Android apps on a PC, but beta-1 takes it to a whole new level.
BlueStacks is announcing that this release utilizes their patent pending LayerCake technology to make applications run as smoothly as if they were running directly on ARM devices. Along with the ability to accurately run pretty much any app and game you can throw at it, BlueStacks has found a way to enable hardware acceleration, just as if you were on a phone or tablet.
This release has a few pre-installed apps for users to enjoy, including Fruit Ninja, Evernote, Barnes & Noble Nook Reader, and more. They use an interesting selling point with Angry Birds Space. While Rovio is charging $6 to play on PC, BlueStacks will pretty much get you the game on your PC for free. Head to their site and sign-up to be a beta tester if you’re interested. Read on for full press details.
BlueStacks Brings 450,000 Android Apps to a Billion PCs
After 3-month alpha test attracts a million users and a Best of CES award,
company releases beta-1 version of “App Player”CAMPBELL, Calif. – March 27, 2012 – BlueStacks announced the availability of the beta-1 version of
their App Player for PC today. The software supports Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7, and enables
Android apps to run in windowed or fullscreen mode on PC.The beta-1 version incorporates the company’s patent-pending LayercakeTM technology. LayerCakeTM
enables Android apps to run seamlessly on x86-based PCs. This includes apps written for the
ARM processor like Angry Birds Space and Fruit Ninja, as well as apps that use hardware graphics
acceleration. These latter capabilities were not part of last year’s alpha version. Apps designed for high-
end tablets that use graphics-intensive engines such as Unity can also run on the new platform.“LayerCake is a disruptive technology that enables PC manufacturers to bring the best of the Android
ecosystem to their customers. It also leverages the advanced graphics capabilities of AMD APU and
GPU platforms,” said Manju Hegde, corporate vice president, Content, Applications and Solutions at
AMD (NYSE: AMD). We are excited to work with BlueStacks to make the emerging Android mobile apps
market part of the broader computing arena, especially given that the beta-1 version has been localized
for 10 different countries.”The alpha test of BlueStacks ran from October through December of last year, and included a more
limited app selection. In those three months, it attracted over a million users in more than 100 countries
such as the US, Korea, Brazil, Germany and China. Over 4.5 Million apps were opened. Especially
popular were apps like Kakao Talk in Korea, Wordfeud in Germany and WhatsApp in the US. “You know,
first there was Angry Birds on Chrome which was a big deal, then recently Steve Ballmer stood up at CES
and announced that Cut the Rope had been ported to IE9 – with BlueStacks, it’s 450,000 apps coming to
Windows at once,” said BlueStacks CEO, Rosen Sharma.
The developers behind top apps like Fruit Ninja, SliceIt!, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Townsmen, Evernote,
Defender and StumbleUpon have partnered with BlueStacks to have their apps pre-loaded in the beta-1
version. “A Billion PCs is a huge potential market for any developer. There is the potential to make good
money from the additional app discovery and usage,” said Markus Kassulke, CEO of popular developer
HandyGames. “The best part is, we don’t have to do any work. Our apps run without any modifications or
porting.”About BlueStacks
BlueStacks is a software company that enables Android apps to run on PCs, Ultrabooks and tablets . BlueStacks
is privately held and headquartered in Silicon Valley with global offices in India, Taiwan and Japan. The company
launched in 2009 and is privately funded. Investors include Andreessen-Horowitz, Radar Partners, Ignition
Partners, Helion Ventures and chipmaker AMD. The company has raised 14 million in funding so far. For more
information visit BlueStacks.com, or join their over 200,000 Facebook fans at http://Facebook.com/bluestacksinc.
Follow along on Twitter at @BlueStacksinc
This capability will essentially make future Win8 tablets the end-all-be-all for both Windows and Android apps. Good stuff… I think?
this is the reason why I’m all psyched up for windows 8. Windows 8 + android apps is a winning combination for me, especially because i’m expecting windows 8 to be able to run microsoft office and stuff.
Too bad BlueStacks is atrocious right now. Not a single feature works. And having the dock on top of everything, all the time, with no options to change it? Who’s bright idea was that?
not sure what you are having an issue with but I am running it just fine on an HP Pavillion G Series Laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium. I started modding it right away, extended the SD card partition out to 15gb, pushed adw launcher to it, installed the android marketplace etc.. able to mount the SD Card as well. Sure there will be some apps that are not compatible but for the most part BlueStacks is pretty neat. The future looks bright.
A reinstall fixed most of my issues. I’m not seeing the appeal of this program. It’s essentially android in a virtual machine. I thought this would have the ability to run apps like widgets on the desktop. Kind of disappointed.
How did you get other apps on it? I’ve tried syncing from my phone, but no new apps show up in bluestacks. I’ve tried side loading, but they don’t show up after the installer is finished.
I am unsure what you might be doing wrong but once i Installed the sync app on my phone and checked off the ones i wanted to push they were sent and i watched them install rather quickly. first thing you should do though is install adw on your phone, you dont have to make it your default launcher its just so you can push it to bluestack. there is also a limit by default as to how many apps you can install in the beta, its a quick pop up so that might be why you dont see the ones you are trying to sync get installed. I would extend the SD card partition to get past that limit before trying to dump apps on it
How do you extend the SD Partition?
Hm…couldn’t get anything to work. The install was ridiculous for a beta application.
I set it up all right. Playing Captain America now. Choppy though, but my PC isn’t the best.
#Newbtastic, you’re either an Apple troll or too lazy. The hide dock button is right there.
To get rid of the stupid dock goto C:Usersyour_nameAppDataLocalBlueStacksRocketDock and rename the .exe to .old. then it can’t launch anymore
This have to be the BEST APP I’VE downloaded. got mine installed in my phone and beta on my PC looks great on my LCD screen. listen to my music apps and play a bit of angry birds fruit slice. but a few apps I have the resolution is a bit off but it works just great.
Is there a trick to adding a Google account to Bluestacks? I can’t get to the Market, Gmail, etc…
I ran Antutu Benchmark on my gaming rig and got less than the Prime. WTF
I’ve done a full review of it here – see how good it is on a decent machine –
http://youtu.be/4-OR4Hx1j-0