Microsoft Blue to Help Merge Windows Phone and Windows 8

What is Microsoft’s Project Blue? The company recently confirmed that it’s working on a secret project under that name, and other reports suggest that it will eventually launch as Windows 8.1 and Windows 8.1 RT. We have also heard that Project Blue will involve Windows Phone in some fashion, and now DigiTimes said it has learned more details on that plan.

Apparently Microsoft is worried that Google’s Chrome OS and Android tie-in so nicely together that consumers will naturally gravitate towards a Chrome OS computer and an Android-powered smartphone. In an effort to compete, Microsoft wants Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8 to tie-in together better than they currently do.

Sync between Windows Phone and Windows right now is pretty seamless, but it’s mostly done through Microsoft SkyDrive, Music and Office 365. You can snap photos on a Windows Phone 8 device, for example, and quickly see them on any Windows 8 computer with access to the cloud. There’s certainly room for tighter integration, however. We would love to see Microsoft enable NFC support in Windows 8 for tap-and-go file transfers. That’s just one idea, but there could be several other options, especially when it comes to enterprise and device management capabilities.

Windows 8.1 is expected to launch in August, but it remains unclear how that will apply to existing Windows Phone devices.