Microsoft Acquires Xamarin To Improve Mobile Division

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Microsoft has made another acquisition in order to strengthen its presence in a mobile market in which the tech giant was a laughing stock just a few years ago.

Under the leadership of Satya Nadella, current Microsoft CEO, the company has become a leader in the mobile space. When he took the reins, Nadella implemented a “cloud first, mobile first” mantra that has come to define the company.

Xamarin adds to growing Microsoft mobile presence

Microsoft is now a major developer for mobile, not just Windows and Windows Phone, but iOS and Android too. First off the tech giant added products from Acompli and SwiftKey, and now the acquisition of Xamarin is the latest demonstration of intent from Microsoft.

While previous acquisitions added apps to the company portfolio, Xamarin is more about developers. The company lets developers “deliver fully native mobile app experiences to all major devices — including iOS, Android, and Windows”. According to Microsoft, developers can “easily share common app code across their iOS, Android and Windows apps while still delivering fully native experiences for each of the platforms”.

Xamarin also lets Microsoft add a huge number of developer customers, as the company boasts more than 15,000 users in 120 countries. Over 100 of them are Fortune 500 companies, and the tools offered by Xamarin are used by over 1.3 million unique developers.

Developers use company tools heavily around the world

“Top enterprises such as Alaska Airlines, Coca-Cola Bottling, Thermo Fisher, Honeywell and JetBlue use Xamarin, as do gaming companies like SuperGiant Games and Gummy Drop. Through Xamarin Test Cloud, all types of mobile developers — C#, Objective-C, Java and hybrid app builders — can also test and improve the quality of apps using thousands of cloud-hosted phones and devices. Xamarin was recently named one of the top startups that help run the Internet”, explains Microsoft.

It seems likely that Xamarin will remain post-acquisition due to its popularity, but with improvements. Microsoft wants to allow developers to write code for all major platforms, and serve content from the cloud, all in one package.

The company says that it will release more information about its plans for Xamarin at Build 2016 and Xamarin Evolve. The exact financial terms of the deal have not been released.

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