Microsoft and Xamarin Partner Globally to Enable Microsoft Developers to Develop Native iOS and Android Apps with C# and Visual Studio

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 13, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Xamarin, the company that empowers developers to build fully native apps for iOS, Android, Windows and Mac from a single shared code base, today announced a global collaboration with Microsoft that makes it easy for mobile developers to build native mobile apps for all major platforms in Visual Studio.  Xamarin is the only solution that unifies native iOS, Android and Windows app development in Visual Studio—bridging one of the largest developer bases in the world to the most successful mobile device platforms.

The collaboration spans three areas:

• A technical collaboration to better integrate Xamarin technology with Microsoft developer tools and services. 
  
  Aligned with this goal, Xamarin is a SimShip partner for Visual Studio 2013, releasing same-day support for Microsoft's latest Visual Studio release that launched today.  In addition, Xamarin has released today full integration for Microsoft's Portable Library projects in iOS and Android apps, making it easier than ever for developers to share code across devices.
• Xamarin's recently launched Xamarin University is now free to MSDN subscribers. The training course helps developers become successful with native iOS and Android development over the course of 30 days.  Classes for the $1,995 program kick off in January 2014, with a limited number of seats available at no cost for MSDN subscribers.
• MSDN subscribers have exclusive trial and pricing options to Xamarin subscriptions for individuals and teams.  

"The broad collaboration between Microsoft and Xamarin which we announced today is targeted at supporting developers interested in extending their applications across multiple devices," said S. Somasegar, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Corporation. "With Xamarin, developers combine all of the productivity benefits of C#, Visual Studio 2013 and Windows Azure with the flexibility to quickly build for multiple device targets."

According to Gartner, by 2016, 70 percent of the mobile workforce will have a smartphone, half of which will be purchased by the employee, and 90 percent of enterprises will have two or more platforms to support. Faced with high expectations for mobile user experiences and the pressures of BYOD, companies and developers alike are looking for scalable ways to migrate business practices and customer interactions to high-performance, native apps on multiple platforms.  

To meet this need to support heterogeneous mobile environments, Microsoft and Xamarin are making it easy for developers to mobilize their existing skills and code.  By standardizing mobile app development with Xamarin and C#, developers are able to share on average 75 percent of their source code across device platforms, while still delivering fully native apps.  Xamarin supports 100 percent of both iOS and Android APIs—anything that can be done in Objective-C or Java can be done in C# with Xamarin.  

In just two years, Xamarin has amassed a community of over 440,000 developers in 70 countries, more than 20,000 paying accounts and a network of over 120 consulting partners globally.

"We live in a multi-platform world, and by embracing Xamarin, Microsoft is enabling its developer community to thrive as mobile developers," said Nat Friedman, CEO and cofounder, Xamarin. "Our collaboration with Microsoft will accelerate enterprise mobility for millions of developers."

The groundbreaking partnership was announced as part of the Visual Studio Live 2013 launch event in New York City.  In addition, Xamarin and Microsoft have teamed up with the popular podcast, .NET Rocks!, for a 20-city nationwide road show featuring live demos on how to use Visual Studio 2013, Xamarin and Windows Azure to build and scale mobile apps for iOS, Android and Windows.  For a full list of cities and to sign up for an event, please visit: http://xamarin.com/modern-apps-roadshow.

About Xamarin
Xamarin is the new standard for enterprise mobile development. No other platform enables businesses to reach all major devices—iOS, Android, Mac and Windows—with 100 percent fully native apps from a single code base.  With Xamarin, businesses standardize mobile app development in C#, share on average 75 percent source code across platforms, and leverage their existing skills, teams, tools and code to rapidly deliver great apps with broad reach.  Xamarin is used by over 440,000 developers from more than 100 Fortune 500 companies and over 20,000 paying customers including Clear Channel, Bosch, McKesson, Halliburton, Cognizant, GitHub, Rdio and WebMD, to accelerate the creation of mission-critical consumer and enterprise apps.  For more information, please visit: www.xamarin.com, read our blog, and follow us on Twitter @xamarinhq.

SOURCE Xamarin