Imagine the possibilities - running full-fledged Microsoft Office on your Asus Transforme Prime, using Photoshop, Illustrator or Gimp to develop your newest theme while away from your PC, or playing Mass Effect 3 on your Nexus 10. Alexandre Julliard demonstrated an Android version of popular Linux application WINE (originally "Wine Is Not an Emulator") earlier today in Brussels to show that Android may soon be able to run native Windows applications.

First, a bit of background: for those of you who aren't already aware of this, WINE is described on its website as "a compatibility layer capable of running Windows applications on several POSIX-compliant operating systems, such as Linux, Mac OSX, & BSD" (so it was only a matter of time before the developers tried to make it work for Android, right?). Alexandre Julliard of Codeweavers is the lead developer for the WINE project, which made its first release back in 1993.

Today, Julliard and Codeweavers reached a significant milestone in efforts to make this work for Android: the product demo. As should be expected for a new project, the demo was described by Michael Larabel of Phoronix as "horrendously slow." This was likely because the demo was being run on an Android emulator rather than an actual Android device. Obviously, the project is far from being ready for release, but the prospects are tantalizing, no?