Xamarin is a San Francisco-based company that helps developers create native mobile apps for iOS, Android, Windows, Google Glass, Amazon Fire Phone and Amazon Fire TV. The company was founded in May 2011 to help developers make the most out of the capabilities offered by different smartphones by creating native apps. With 170 employees, 15,000 customers and 600,000 developers, Xamarin is a global company with offices in more than 120 countries around the world.
One of the core products of Xamarin is the Xamarin Platform that unifies different development tools into the same platform allowing developers to do native iOS, Android and Windows development in C# using Xamarin Studio. The advantage for developers when they use this platform is that their code can be reused or shared across different device platforms. Moreover, developers can use the underlying functionality of the smartphones such as iBeacons and Android fragments through native API access, and can also leverage the native hardware and its performance. Furthermore, this platform allows developers to build apps with native user interface, so the apps not only look the way end users want, but they behave in tune with the users' expectations.
This ability to use these native user interfaces and functionality are a boon for developers because they get to create the right apps that would have the best performance. Before Xamarin, the only option developers had, was to create apps in the native language of each device that cost developers enormous amounts of time and resources. Since Xamarin offers a platform to create apps for all operating systems using C#, it has cut back the development time, and has also given room for more innovation.
The latest tool offered by Xamarin is its same-day support for Amazon Fire Phone. Using this tool, developers can create native apps, and even be the first to make it available when the phone hits the markets on July 25.
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