Xamarin.Forms

Xamarin is a Microsoft-owned San Francisco-based software company founded in May 2011 by the engineers that created Mono, Xamarin.Android (formerly Mono for Android) and Xamarin.iOS (formerly MonoTouch), which are cross-platform implementations of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) and Common Language Specifications (often called Microsoft .NET).

With a C#-shared codebase, developers can use Xamarin tools to write native Android, iOS, and Windows apps with native user interfaces and share code across multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, and Linux. According to Xamarin, over 1.4 million developers were using Xamarin's products in 120 countries around the world as of April 2017.

On February 24, 2016, Microsoft announced it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Xamarin.

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History

Origins in Ximian and Mono

In 1999 Miguel de Icaza and Nat Friedman launched what eventually became known as Ximian to support and develop software for de Icaza's nascent GNOME project. After Microsoft first announced their .NET Framework in June 2000, de Icaza began investigating whether a Linux version was feasible. The Mono open source project was launched on July 19, 2001. Ximian was bought by Novell on August 4, 2003, which was then acquired by Attachmate in April 2011.

After the acquisition, Attachmate announced hundreds of layoffs for the Novell workforce, including Mono developers, putting the future of Mono in question.

Founding Xamarin

On May 16, 2011, Miguel de Icaza announced on his blog that Mono would be developed and supported by Xamarin, a newly formed company that planned to release a new suite of mobile products. According to de Icaza, at least part of the original Mono team had moved to the new company.

The name Xamarin comes from the name of the Tamarin monkey, replacing the leading T with an X. This is in line with the naming theme used ever since Ximian was started.

After Xamarin was announced, the future of the project was questioned since MonoTouch and Mono for Android would now be in direct competition with the existing commercial offerings owned by Attachmate. It was not known at that time how Xamarin would prove they had not illegally used technologies previously developed when they were employed by Novell for the same work.

In July 2011, however, Novell – now a subsidiary of Attachmate – and Xamarin announced that Novell had granted a perpetual license to Xamarin for Mono, MonoTouch and Mono for Android, and Xamarin formally and legally took official stewardship of the project.

Product development

In December 2012, Xamarin released Xamarin.Mac, a plugin for the existing MonoDevelop Integrated development environment (IDE), which allows developers to build C#-based applications for the Apple's macOS operating system and package them for publishing via the App Store.

In February 2013, Xamarin announced the release of Xamarin 2.0. The release included two main components: Xamarin Studio, a re-branding of its open-source IDE Monodevelop; and integration with Visual Studio, Microsoft's IDE for the .NET Framework, allowing Visual Studio to be used for creating applications for Android, iOS and Windows.

Funding

On July 17, 2013, Xamarin announced that they had closed $16 million in Series B funding led by Lead Edge Capital. Several investors from their Series A funding also participated, including Charles River Ventures, Floodgate, and Ignition Partners. On August 21, 2014, Xamarin successfully closed an additional $54 million in Series C funding, which is one of the largest rounds of funding ever raised by a mobile app development platform. Total funding for the company to date is $82 million.

Acquisition

On February 24, 2016, Xamarin and Microsoft announced that Microsoft signed a definitive agreement to acquire Xamarin. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, though the Wall Street Journal reported the price at between $400 million and $500 million.

Microsoft subsidiary (2016–present)

At Microsoft Build 2016 Microsoft announced that they will open-source the Xamarin SDK and that they will bundle it as a free tool within Microsoft Visual Studio's integrated development environment, and Visual Studio Enterprise users would also get Xamarin's enterprise features free of charge. As a part of the acquisition they would also relicense Mono completely under the MIT License and would release all other Xamarin SDK software through the .NET Foundation also under the MIT License.

Products

Xamarin platform

The Xamarin company produces an open source software platform by the same name, and Xamarin 2.0 was released in February 2013. Xamarin extends the .NET developer platform with tools and libraries specifically for building apps for Android, iOS, tvOS, watchOS,