Microsoft Makes Xamarin free in Visual Studio, Open-Sources SDK

At its Build 2016 conference today, Microsoft announced it is open-sourcing the Xamarin SDK and making the tool a free component of Visual Studio. This includes Xamarin software development kit, runtime, libraries and command line tools.

Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of the Cloud and Enterprise Group, also said Microsoft will make the Xamarin cross-platform mobile application development software available for free as part of Visual Studio. Microsoft announced plans to acquire Xamarin last month. Xamarin provides a popular platform that enables developers to build mobile applications using C# and deliver native mobile app experiences on iOS, Android and Windows devices.

“The Xamarin news is big,” said Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. “What it does is completes the circle where Microsoft can claim it is ‘Switzerland’ related to app development. If developers and enterprises buy into a heterogeneous environment with Windows, iOS and Android, then Xamarin makes sense. And if Xamarin makes sense then why not use Azure services for things like natural language speech, object recognition, cognitive, Office 365, etc.? This is a big play that, if successful, would make Microsoft a mobile player without a mobile OS. Fascinating.”

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