Microsoft will unify Windows, Windows Phone, and Xbox into a one converged operating system

Microsoft’s Satya Nadella has confirmed that the next version of Windows, probably Windows 9, will unify the Windows, Windows Phone, and Xbox operating systems into “one single converged operating system.” Microsoft had previously made some moves towards unification with Universal Windows Apps that run across all three platforms, but this new version of Windows will go a lot further.

"We will streamline the next version of Windows from three operating systems into one single converged operating system," said Nadella. "This means one operating system that covers all screen sizes," he concluded.

Last year, Steve Ballmer had already set the wheels in motion for such an integration when he merged the Windows division with corporate VP Terry Myerson's Windows Phone division and created a new operating systems division.

This is a major departure from Apple's style and from Microsoft's previous approach.

Apple chose to cleave its tech products into two app eco-systems: iOS (mobile products, iPhone and iPad) and Mac OS (PC products, MacBook laptops, iMac desktop).

To be clear, Microsoft will still sell different editions of its operating systems, for instance, a Windows Pro edition, a Windows Enterprise edition, a cheap one tightly bound with Bing for low-price devices (which we'll see by the holiday season, Nadella says). But under the hood, they will be more alike than different.

And the company will "unify our stores, our commerce and developer platforms," Nadella promised.

This is hugely important to developers. A good billion people use Windows every day. But as long as Windows was chopped up into a bunch of different operating systems that didn't work together, all of those PC customers didn't add up to phone, tablet, or living room console app customers.