{"id":8641,"date":"2014-08-21T12:00:44","date_gmt":"2014-08-21T11:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/?p=8641"},"modified":"2014-08-21T12:00:44","modified_gmt":"2014-08-21T11:00:44","slug":"xamarin-announces-large-round-of-funding-plans-international-expansion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/8641-xamarin-announces-large-round-of-funding-plans-international-expansion.html","title":{"rendered":"Xamarin announces large round of funding, plans international expansion"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is a case of \u201cright time, right place\u201d for Xamarin<\/a>, as it scoops up Windows developers who need either to transition to iOS and Android, or to add mobile support to existing applications. You can also port applications to the Mac with its cross-platform development framework based on C#; no bad thing as Mac sales continue to boom.<\/p>\n

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Xamarin also fits with Microsoft\u2019s new strategy, as I understand it, which is to provide strong support for iOS and Android for applications such as Microsoft Office, and services such as those hosted on Microsoft Azure.<\/p>\n

Now the company has announced an additional $54 million of funding, which CEO Nat Friedman tells me is \u201cthe largest round of financing achieved by any mobile platform company ever\u201d.<\/p>\n

The financing comes from \u201cnew and existing investors, including Lead Edge Capital, Insight Venture Partners, Charles River Ventures, Ignition Partners, and Floodgate.\u201d<\/p>\n

What will the money be spent on? \u201cTwo things,\u201d says Friedman. \u201cWe\u2019re planning to expand our sales and marketing into Europe. We\u2019re opening a sales office in London in the Fall. We did a roadshow with Microsoft in Europe and it was extremely successful. Second, we\u2019re going to invest in improving the quality of our platforms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Friedman notes that mobile should not be considered a development niche. \u201cOur view is that in the future all software will be mobile software in some way or another, when you build an application it will have to have some kind of mobile surface area.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few other points to note. One is that Xamarin Forms, recently introduced, has been a big hit with developers. \u201cThe Xamarin Forms forum has been our most popular forum,\u201d says Friedman. \u201cWe\u2019ve been really surprised.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company used to promote the idea of avoiding cross-platform code for the user interface, but then introduced Xamarin Forms as a cross-platform GUI framework, arguing that because it uses only native controls, it avoids the main drawbacks of the idea.<\/p>\n

Some of the funding then will go into improving Xamarin Forms and tools to work with the framework.<\/p>\n

Another key area is Visual Studio integration. The acquisition<\/a> of the Visual Studio integration team from Clarius Consulting, in May 2014, is also significant here, since Clarius had strong expertise in this area.<\/p>\n

Might Microsoft try to acquire Xamarin? Interesting question, and one which Friedman is not in a position to discuss; I am not a financial expert but would guess that Xamarin\u2019s independent expansion increases its ability to be independent, though investors may be hoping to reap the rewards of an acquisition, who knows?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is a case of \u201cright time, right place\u201d for Xamarin, as it scoops up Windows developers who need either to transition to iOS and Android, or to add mobile support to existing applications. You can also port applications to the Mac with its cross-platform development framework based on C#; no bad thing as Mac … Continue reading Xamarin announces large round of funding, plans international expansion<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,56,57,80,94],"tags":[104,236,586,1044],"class_list":["post-8641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-microsoft","category-mobile","category-mono","category-software-development","category-visual-studio","tag-net","tag-c","tag-microsoft","tag-xamarin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8641\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}