Xamarin debuts iOS and Android app development inside Visual Studio for C# programmers
If you develop in C#, you can now build apps for iPhone and iPad ... and hundreds of millions of Android smartphones and tablets. And you can do it all right on your PC in your favorite development environment, Visual Studio.
Context & Ripple Effects
Xamarin is lowering the boundary between C# work and mobile deployment by putting iOS and Android development into the Visual Studio workflow. That matters as Android’s handset presence expanded across major markets, while iPhone and iPad remained distinct targets for app makers.
The launch is a bid to make one established PC-based toolchain serve both mobile platforms, rather than requiring C# programmers to adopt separate development environments for each.
First-order effects
- C# developers using Visual Studio gain a single development environment for building applications aimed at iPhone, iPad, and Android devices.
- Xamarin becomes the intermediary between Visual Studio-based C# workflows and the two leading mobile platforms.
Second-order effects
- Mobile development-tool vendors serving C# programmers face pressure to match the convenience of a unified workflow across iOS and Android.
- Businesses with existing C# teams can weigh mobile projects against the cost of retraining developers for platform-specific tools.
Third-order effects
- If unified toolchains gain traction, mobile development competition shifts toward languages and developer environments that can reach multiple device ecosystems rather than platform-specific skills alone.
The trend: Mobile app development is moving toward cross-platform toolchains that let established enterprise programming communities target both iOS and Android.