Scott Guthrie announced that Microsoft has signed an agreement to acquire Xamarin. Will the industry go crazy with excitement?
Doubtful.
This announcement is one of those leaves most people mumbling, “finally” more so than jumping up for joy. This is the announcement that people expected last year or even the year before.
While it is unlikely anyone is surprised by this acquisition, the end result is still a very good one. Xamarin have been very visible in the Microsoft space including their strong presence at the Microsoft Build conferences. Many Microsoft developers choosing to do cross-platform mobile development are already using Xamarin. With its ability to target iOS and Android using C# along with its ability to interact with Visual Studio, Xamarin has lowered the barrier to creating native applications for existing Microsoft developers.
While I downplay the surprise of this announcement, it is a big deal. Going forward I would expect that we’ll see even better integration with what can be done between Visual Studio, Xamarin, and the .NET platform. C# and .NET developers. Scott announced that they expect to provide an even deeper integration for a seamless mobile app developer experience. I expect that the future will be bright for C# and .NET developers who want to target multiple native platforms with a single application code base!
