What is Future Of Xamarin??

The growing demands and challenges for mobile app development

Xamarin has in the past been courted by a number of companies in addition to Microsoft; IBM being the most notable; but timing is everything in the world of tech. IBM may be ruing their tardiness but in truth Xamarin would always have been more at home with Microsoft (it's technology is based on .NET after all!) Enterprise mobile is a booming sector - every year mobile visits account for a greater and greater share of total web traffic. We are experiencing more and more companies and public sector clients beginning to recognise the benefits of mobile, both for their own internal efficiencies and for their users’ satisfaction.

Looking to the future, the growth of wearables and the number of platforms which we need to develop for is increasing one Kickstarter at a time. Managing or mitigating the sheer number of specialist teams needed to develop for these platforms is becoming a key challenge, and one that Xamarin is currently well placed to tackle.

Growing industry acceptance of Xamarin

Back in the day Apple very were protective of their iOS platform, and were known to take a dislike to apps built using cross-platform frameworks. But the times have changed; it was smiles all round as Apple and Microsoft shared a stage at last year’s launch of the iPad Pro. This thawing of relations is likely to push more developers towards cross-platform frameworks, safe in the knowledge of Apple’s acknowledgement of their growing importance.

The media attention around the acquisition has also boosted Xamarin’s profile with enterprise developers. Not to say that this wasn’t the case before - we have ourselves seen a slow but steady ‘awakening’ among many of our own enterprise clients. In all we anticipate a bright future for Xamarin, with both increased interest and newfound opportunities as part of Microsoft’s growing catalogue of products.

To find out more about Xamarin and what it can do for you, keep up to date with Xamarin’s upcoming Evolve 2016 conference, or drop us a line.

Xamarin‘s cross-platform mobile application framework has Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android at its core. Both Xamarin.Android and Xamarin.iOS are based on Mono. Mono is an open source implementation of .NET (CLI and CLS). Xamarin’s customers are Microsoft (.NET) shops. Microsoft is open sourcing .NET itself. What does all this mean for Xamarin?

Is Xamarin’s competitive advantage going to be undermined by the open source .NET? Microsoft’s Universal Application Platform (UAP) and the promise of making .NET applications run on Mac and Linux seems to indicate that Microsoft may be emerging as a threat to Xamarin.

The formidable Microsoft has perhaps spelled death for Xamarin by standing up a competitor to Mono. If you are a developer getting started with Xamarin or already using Xamarin, should you be worried? After all Xamarin has a significant learning curve. Just because you are proficient with C# and Visual Studio does not mean that learning curve of cross-platform development with Xamarin is insignificant. I have worked with Xamarin platform for more than two years. As you get into Xamarin development, you quickly realize that you need to know and learn quite a lot about the platforms that you are developing for. So, should you put your time and money into Xamarin? Should you (continue to) invest in Xamarin? Does Xamarin have a future?

Xamarin’s core competitive advantage is not in competition with the (.NET Core) class libraries, SDKs and server frameworks being open sourced by Microsoft. Xamarin’s competitive advantage is in the ecosystem of development and testing tools as well as infrastructure that supports cross-platform mobile development, testing and monitoring. Xamarin marvelously simplifies creation of native apps on iOS and Android using C# (now F# also). The pace of innovation at Xamarin is breathtaking. There is nothing quite like it to enable cross-platform development of native mobile applications with Microsoft’s flagship programming language at its core and the incredible productivity allowed by Microsoft’s and 3rd party tool set.

I think both Microsoft and Xamarin are going to greatly benefit from the formation of .NET Foundation and open sourcing of .NET as well as cross-platform implementation of .NET. Keep in mind that while Mono is open source, Xamarin.Android and Xamarin.iOS are commercial products. Xamarin is going to benefit immensely by Mono closing the gaps with .NET BCL implementation and converged implementations of Mono and .NET in the near future, without giving up its core competitive advantages. Microsoft has seen the writing on the wall – The future belongs to Cloud and Mobile. Microsoft has a strong presence in Cloud, but not so much in Mobile. Microsoft is going to benefit from .NET running on Mac and Linux by expanding their customer base to those platforms in its cloud offerings in Azure. But Xamarin’s gains are also going to translate into broader and deeper mobile market penetration for Microsoft’s tools and technologies, benefiting Microsoft’s Cloud strategy even further. Xamarin’s success is strategically important to Microsoft. Now even more so.

I think that Xamarin will continue to gain strength and remain a viable cross-platform development framework as far as I can see. Xamarin’s future looks very bright to me.

In the modern era, IT has become one of the most powerful assets for any business. Enterprises that are leveraging maximum out of IT tools and infrastructure are the ones that have created a competitive advantage for their brand over rivals. IT and its proper implementation can offer any business three distinct advantages – increased productivity, optimisation of business process and most importantly drawing maximum advantage from Big Data (a concept that is taking off and would determine the future of any business). Enterprise apps sit at the core of these benefits as they have lent a new dimension to how businesses optimize their workflow. They are fuelling growth for companies that have adopted this new model of working.

Working smart is the new working hard. Today smartphones and tablets have transformed the entire corporate landscape. They allow data collected from field workers to be converted into information in real-time. The adoption of smart devices and enterprise mobility solutions is helping businesses across the board cut operational costs, take instant and informed decisions and improve efficiency in their supply chain. In short, to remain relevant and competitive you can’t say ‘No’ to enterprise apps. But with so many app frameworks and platforms to choose from, how do you overcome the puzzle. The answer lies in Xamarin app development, and there are good reasons to put your money here. Let’s find out why Xamarin is the future of enterprise mobile app development.

Native Experience in Cross Platform Apps

It is common for businesses to be torn between developing native apps and cross platform apps. While native apps offer great user experience, cross-platform apps solve the problem related to data sharing and also cut down on development costs. What Xamarin does is it addresses the most common pitfall in cross-platform apps – the problem of native experience. So the codes can be ‘written once and run anywhere’ without creating any hiccups with the native user experience. So a developer can write the core fundamentals once, and this can be integrated with platform specific interface. So the end users can use Android, iOS or Windows powered device but they would always enjoy the native experience.

Expanding Offline Usability

As businesses grow and reach remote corners of the world, the limitations of technology are coming to light. Enterprises that are working in areas with no Internet connectivity often complain about how enterprise apps tend to become handicap is such environments. This was one of the themes at the recently concluded Xamarin Evolve 2016 (the largest cross-platform mobile conference in the world). And it is quite interesting to note the kind of solutions that Xamarin developers from around the world have come up with. Xamarin is facilitating the development of apps that reduce the dependence on network traffic. These apps can smartly switch between connected and not-connected areas and allow access to a majority of their functions. There would be a greater focus on this problem in the future in the Xamarin community, and significant breakthroughs are expected.

Sharing and Collaboration

There is neither the need nor the joy in reinventing the wheel and since early days the folks at Xamarin have realized it. The Xamarin Component Store allows developers around the world to collaborate with each other and share different components. This ensures that enterprises don’t have to bear the additional cost of ‘reinventing the wheel’ as a lot of free and paid components are easily available. Apart from the cost advantage this also helps in cutting down the concept to delivery time. Remember even a few days can matter a lot in today’s competitive business environment.

Increasing Acceptance in the Industry

Last but not the least there has been increased acceptance for Xamarin powered enterprise apps in the industry. If you have kept a tab on the industry, you would know how Apple disliked apps that weren’t built using its own SDK. It seldom endorsed such apps in the past but times change fast in the technology industry and recently Apple even shared the stage with Microsoft during one of its major product launches. This is being seen as a crowning moment for Xamarin. Other giants including SAP and IBM have already collaborated with Xamarin, and this is the signal of a shift towards cross-platform enterprise mobility apps.

The scope and possibilities with Xamarin powered Enterprise Mobility Solutions are immense. In fact, clients across industries have woken up to the immense benefits that this platform offers them regarding scalability and flexibility to be in sync with the demands of the market. If you want to get the best out of this platform, you need to hire a skilled Xamarin development Partner with an eye on the future.