14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has just purchased another company, this time in an attempt to address the lack of apps that has been plaguing Windows and Windows Phone for so many years.
Xamarin, a company that Redmond has already worked with since forever, has been purchased by Microsoft for an undisclosed sum, with Scott Guthrie, head of Microsoft's Cloud and Enterprise business, announcing the acquisition and hinting at future integration in a blog post.
Xamarin is the company behind app development solutions aimed at devs using C# to create apps that can run on multiple platforms, including Windows, iOS, and Android. Certainly, this can help Microsoft tackle the lack of apps on Windows by allowing developers to create apps for multiple platforms at the same time, including its very own.
At this point, interest in building applications for Windows and Windows 10 Mobile is still below expectations while both Android and iOS remain more appealing platforms because of the bigger market share. But with Xamarin’s acquisition and integration plans that have not yet been disclosed, Microsoft is trying to offer a cross-platform solution that allows the creation of apps for all platforms, including Android, iOS, and Windows.
More information at BUILD
Microsoft says that more details on the integration of Xamarin will be announced at the BUILD developer conference in late March.
“With today's 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 seamless mobile app dev experiences. The combination of Xamarin, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Team Services, and Azure provides a complete mobile app dev solution that provides everything you need to develop, test, deliver and instrument mobile apps for every device. We are really excited to see what developers build with it,” Guthrie said.
Microsoft already has an ongoing partnership with Xamarin since 2013, so this acquisition was clearly just a matter of time, especially given Redmond’s struggle to bring more developers on its platform.