Microsoft Acquisition of Xamarin: Good or Bad News?
February 29, 2016
Microsoft announced this month that an agreement had been officially signed to acquire Xamarin, a leading platform for mobile app development. What does this mean for the mobile app development community?
What is Xamarin?
Xamarin is a popular mobile development platform because it enables developers to code for all major devices, while also enabling native user experience. The platform uses C# and allows for common codes being easily shared. So apps can be written one time and used for Android, iOS, and Windows devices, saving valuable time and resulting in a great finished product with the native user experience for each device. Xamarin is four years old with headquarters based in San Francisco and has 15,000 clients worldwide including impressive Fortune 500 companies and enterprises such as Coca-cola, JetBlue, and Alaska Airlines. The company has 350 employees and over 1.3 million developers.
Happy News
At Perfected App, we strongly believe the acquisition is great news for our clients and the community. Microsofts investment in Xamarin means that we can look forward to stability and security from the platform. Funding will be channelled into developing their technology which enables growth and expansion to benefit the mobile app development field further. And now Windows developers will be empowered to build for all mobile devices, which means more developers on the market will have accessibility to this platform and technology. The acquisition also signifies great long-term stability to use Xamarin.
And why is this acquisition-happy news for Microsoft? Microsoft has never been a frontrunner in cross-platform mobile app development and struggled to competeand not very well. Microsoft has developed a strong partnership with Xamarin, and now this very smart acquisition means that instead of competing against OS and Android, they are rising above the competition itself.
The Executive Vice President of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise Group, Scott Guthrie, released this official statement:
In conjunction with Visual Studio, Xamarin provides a rich mobile development offering that enables developers to build mobile apps using C# and deliver fully native mobile app experiences to all major devices including iOS, Android, and Windows. Xamarins approach enables developers to take advantage of the productivity and power of .NET to build mobile apps, and to use C# to write to the full set of native APIs and mobile capabilities provided by each device platform. This enables developers to easily share common app code across their iOS, Android and Windows apps while still delivering fully native experiences for each of the platforms With todays acquisition announcement we will be taking this work much further to make our world class developer tools and services even better with deeper integration and enable seamless mobile app dev experiences We are really excited to see what you build with it.
More details about the acquisition will be announced at the Build conference in March 2016, reports Nat Friedman from Xamarin.
This acquisition is a new beginning for Xamarinthe company and its productsand is an opportunity to help many, many more developers build great apps. Like many of you, I see Microsoft and Xamarin as a perfect fit. Microsofts mobile-first, cloud-first strategy is a great match for the Xamarin products and team.
This acquisition means great things for mobile app development technology. Xamarin will have greater funding invested in their technology and enjoy long-term success and growth. Their platform is a great advantage to developers who can enjoy its unique ability to build apps on all devices with a native user experience.
Why We Work with Xamarin
Perfected App, a leading mobile app development company, chose to work with Xamarin and StrongLoops technology out of a clear need for a framework solution that makes the development process for NodeJS projects successful. Through our constant and outstanding commitment to innovation and refinement of the development process, we have created several in-house tools to cut down on development time. Our consultants are always happy to answer any mobile app technology questions about your product or to get you started with your app. Contact us now!