Microsoft To Bring Remote Desktop Apps To Android & iOS This Month

Windows-iPad

In a move that’s sure to upset some third-party app developers, Microsoft is planning to launch official Remote Desktop apps for Android and iOS later this month. Like the Remote Desktop solutions for Windows and OS X, the apps will allow you to connect to your PC and control it remotely from your smartphone and tablet.

Apps like Splashtop and LogMeIn Ignition already provide this function on Android and iOS, and Microsoft offers a Remote Desktop app for Windows RT — but this will be the first time the software giant has officially made the feature available on rival mobile devices.

It’s unclear what kind of features the apps will bring at this point, but we expect them to be largely the same as their Windows RT counterpart.

The Android version of the app is expected to support smartphones and tablets running Gingerbread and above, while the iOS version will run on iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches running iOS 6 or iOS 7. There’s no specific release date for either yet, but Microsoft says they’ll be available “later this month.”