SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 20, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --Xamarin, the company that empowers 230,000 developers to build fully native mobile apps across all major platforms, today announced the availability of Xamarin 2.0. The release introduces Xamarin Studio, an integrated development environment (IDE), and the Xamarin Component Store, two compelling new products that significantly improve developer productivity. In addition, Xamarin is launching the game-changing ability for developers to build iOS applications in Visual Studio—bridging one of the largest developer bases in the world to the most successful mobile device platform.

Enterprise mobility, BYOD and the explosion of iOS and Android device usage for work and play are putting tremendous pressure on businesses to deliver great app experiences to employees and customers on all major platforms. According to analyst firm Gartner, the ratio of projects focused on mobile vs. PC app development is expected to shift to a ratio of 4:1 by 2015. However, many projects are delayed because of the technical complexities of developing for multiple platforms coupled with the severe shortage of developers skilled in each platform's distinct programming languages.  

Xamarin solves these challenges by unifying native iOS, Android and Mac development in C#, the language used by an estimated 8 million developers worldwide. With Xamarin, businesses leverage existing in-house developer skills, code and tools to build apps that share up to 90 percent of their source code across device platforms, essentially transforming existing teams into mobile developers virtually overnight. Unlike traditional approaches to cross-platform development that deliver lowest common denominator user experiences, Xamarin developers build world class, native apps for multiple platforms in a fraction of the time.

"In the very near future, every business process and customer transaction will happen on a mobile device," said Nat Friedman, CEO and cofounder, Xamarin. "Xamarin's unique approach of fully native user interfaces combined with a highly efficient code sharing story has already helped thousands of businesses to successfully deliver on their mobile strategy.  Xamarin 2.0 makes it even faster for all mobile developers to build great native apps that reach employees and consumers on all major platforms."

Since launching less than two years ago, Xamarin has already amassed a community of over 230,000 mobile developers. Last year, the company increased its developer community and revenue nearly 300 percent, growing to more than 12,000 new customers including Clear Channel, Rdio, the Portland Trailblazers, and National Instruments. Xamarin's breakthrough approach to multi-platform native app development now brings the total number of devices that can be reached by developing in C# to 2.6 billion globally.

"Xamarin enables our entire developer ecosystem to extend their skills and build apps for all modern device platforms," said Mitra Azizirad, General Manager of Developer Tools Marketing & Sales at Microsoft. "We are very happy to be working closely with Xamarin to ensure that developers targeting any platform can do so with Visual Studio and C#."

"Xamarin offers the best of all worlds, " said Matt Crocker, Director of Client Engineering at Rdio, a music streaming service available in 17 countries.  "Xamarin enables us to deliver high performance, native apps that, until Xamarin, were only possible with Objective-C and Java. Sharing over 50,000 lines of code across platforms gives us more time to spend on great user experiences. Xamarin 2.0 will help us build even better apps, faster."

Xamarin 2.0 Features

Xamarin 2.0 builds on the company's unique, cross-platform native approach with the following new features:   

• Xamarin.iOS for Visual Studio.  With Xamarin, Visual Studio users can now build iOS, Android and Windows apps in their favorite IDE.   
• Xamarin Studio.  A new IDE built from the ground up for streamlined, multi-platform native mobile design, development, debugging and deployment.   
• The Xamarin Component Store.  An app store for code, where developers add third-party libraries, and beautifully designed native UI controls and themes to their apps with a few lines of code, making developers much better app designers.   
• Starter Edition.  A free tier that makes it easy for individual developers to get started and experience the power of the platform.  

In addition to Xamarin's developer and revenue growth, the company's ecosystem of consulting partners has grown to over 35 partners in the four months since the partner program launched.  

"Given today's heterogeneous device world and high expectations for mobile user experiences, Xamarin is the only solution that enables RBA to deliver on native, cross-platform mobile apps for mission-critical enterprise projects," says Will Clevenger, General Manager, RBA Consulting, a national Digital, CRM and Technology Services consulting firm building apps for a wide variety of customers, including one of the largest health care insurers in the U.S.

For additional information on Xamarin 2.0 features, benefits and pricing visit: blog.xamarin.com where you can also sign up for our Introduction to Xamarin 2.0 webinar.  

About Xamarin
Xamarin's mission is to make it fast, easy and fun to build great mobile apps. More than 230,000 developers already use Xamarin to create native, cross-platform enterprise and consumer apps for iOS, Android and Mac, representing 74 of the Fortune 500 companies.  Join over 500 top mobile developers and industry leaders who are shaping the future of mobile at Xamarin Evolve 2013, April 14 - 17 in Austin, TX.  For more information, visit: xamarin.com.

Contact:
Scott Beaver
Bateman Group
415-503-1818
xamarin@bateman-group.com

SOURCE Xamarin