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I can't recall hearing anything about this, but as I was answering another question this crossed my mind.

With both Windows RT and WP8 running on ARM and having a "shared core," will RT be able to run apps designed for WP8?

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Windows RT will be unable to run Windows Phone 8 application and vice versa. – Ramhound Oct 29 '12 at 16:36
Submit as an answer? Do we have any official word on this? – corwin01 Oct 29 '12 at 16:39

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up vote 5 down vote accepted

No.

You are correct that both run on ARM but the system internals are different.

Besides this the libraries that exist on the phone are different then those for the desktop or RT version.

This being said, if the applications are recompiled and you believe MS, it should be easy to port programs between the two, but this happens not because of the CPUs being similiar but because of the libraires and frameworks being similiar.

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So much for Windows 8 "blurring the lines" between the two OSs :) – Deanna Oct 29 '12 at 16:26
Oh well, we can dream, right? – corwin01 Oct 29 '12 at 16:29
Windows Phone 8 is NOT based on the Windows CE kernel. I have to downvote this for this reason. EVERYTHING annouced about Windows Phone 8 says its based on the kernel contained within Windows 8. – Ramhound Oct 29 '12 at 16:36
@Ramhound take a look at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Phone_8 – Mikhail Oct 29 '12 at 16:38
Relevant quote from Misha's link: "Windows Phone 8 will replace its previously Windows CE-based architecture with one based off the Windows NT kernel with many components shared with Windows 8, allowing applications to be easily ported between the two platforms." – RedGrittyBrick Oct 29 '12 at 16:48

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