Xamarin Announces Acquisition by Microsoft

Yesterday, Xamarin announced that they will be joining Microsoft. With this acquisition, Microsoft hopes to establish themselves as a front runner in the mobile application development. While this obtainment by Microsoft may not come as a surprise, this is what Microsoft is getting according to Forrester Research:

• Cross-platform native mobile app development, in C#. Xamarin’s origins include Mono (remember that?), and it represents the expansion of the .Net runtime to other platforms, including iOS and Android. Developers write C# code that will be natively compiled to these devices, which runs at similar speed as apps written in Objective-C, Swift, or Java.  
• Automated acceptance testing for mobile apps. Xamarin develops and maintains the Calabash open source project for mobile acceptance testing. We’ve seen growing popularity of Calabash amongst enterprise mobile dev teams, especially Global SIs, like those we reviewed in last year’s Enterprise Mobile App Services Forrester Waves.  
• A device cloud for system and performance testing. The Xamarin Test Cloud automates app testing on more than 2000 real devices in the cloud. We expect to see this service folded into Azure in short order, with a low cost on-demand model to compete with Amazon Device Farm, Google Cloud Test Lab, and PerfectoMobile.
• On device analytics to measure mobile apps. Measuring apps is just as important as building them. While the importance of analytic instrumentation is still a work in progress for many enterprise developers, experienced mobile devs get it. Xamarin Insights provides a basic working set of technical and engagement level measures for mobile app dev teams.

“This acquisition is a new beginning for Xamarin—the company and its products—and is an opportunity to help many, many more developers build great apps,” says Xamarin CEO Nat Friedman. “Like many of you, I see Microsoft and Xamarin as a perfect fit. Microsoft’s mobile-first, cloud-first strategy is a great match for the Xamarin products and team. Check out Scott Guthrie’s blog post to get his perspective.”

“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,” says Scott Guthrie in his blog post. “Xamarin’s 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. Xamarin’s unique solution has fueled amazing growth for more than four years.”

So far the reaction to this acquisition has been that it makes sense for both companies. Xamarin gets the financial backing and reputation of a big, worldwide company and Microsoft gets a better product with better front end development.

Widget not in any sidebars