Why is Xamarin the Great Pick for Your Cross-Platform App Development?

Mobile applications have become extremely important for businesses at present. Nevertheless, the actual challenge will be to figure out which platform will be appropriate for their business. Will it be a good idea to select a native application individually for iOS and Android devices or go for a cross-platform technology that helps your application run on multiple gadgets? It is intriguing to observe that Native and Cross-platform applications come with their advantages and drawbacks; however, it is quite difficult for most companies to choose the best one out there.

It is suggested by statistics that approximately 78% of the companies are emphasizing creating apps supporting multiple platforms such as Windows, Android, and iOS since cross-platform applications happen to be cost-effective, flexible, as well as simple to use.

Among the various cross-platform frameworks such as React Native, Flutter, and Xamarin, Xamarin is gaining tremendous popularity. So, why should you select Xamarin for cross-platform app development?

The robust C# environment of Xamarin, along with cross-platform and native APIs and libraries, plus the simplicity of deployment, helps make it a sensible choice for app development.

In this post, we will be talking about why Xamarin has become so popular amongst companies right now regarding the development of hybrid applications and how it can become effective for your subsequent business application idea.

What exactly is Xamarin?

Xamarin was acquired by Microsoft in the year 2016 and was integrated into the .Net platform. At present, it happens to be an extremely well-known open-source framework for hybrid mobile development. One single technology stack of C# language, Xamarin, and .Net framework allows the simple and quick creation of mobile applications for Windows, iOS, and Android OS.

Xamarin happens to be a software organization responsible for creating CLI (Common Language Infrastructure) implementations and is a development platform intended to create mobile apps for Android, Windows, and iOS.

How effective is Xamarin?

According to statistics, the products of Xamarin are quite well-known at present across the globe. In fact, as of April 2017, over 1.6 million developers and 16,000 companies had been using them in more than 100 countries. Siemens, Bosch, Slack, and Pinterest are some of the companies out there that happen to be well-known customers. This platform’s efficiency and reliability can be proved by the fact that lots of industry leaders have used this platform for basing their solutions.

Xamarin Features

Cross-platform app development is becoming quite popular since it comes with some benefits over native app development. Why make use of Xamarin for cross-platform app development? In a nutshell, it can be rightly asserted that Xamarin is the perfect tool for serving the developers – for creating codes once and using them across different platforms without impairing the app’s performance, user experience, or maintainability.

Xamarin can be considered to be a universal tool that enables you to create a single app logic employing .net and C# for all the three platforms simultaneously.

Approaches for Xamarin Cross Platform Development

 You will come across a couple of ways of creating cross-platform apps by making use of Xamarin.

1. Forms technology enables you to create a visual interface, attach several C# logics to it, and share this codebase across Windows, iOS, and Android platforms with some trivial code modifications. In this case, the backend and UI code will be pulled together for every single solution.

2. Xamarin Native consists of Xamarin.Android, Xamarin.iOS, and Xamarin.Windows libraries will enable you to create separate applications for every single platform. On this occasion, the UI code happens to be unique for all the solutions and the backend, which have been shared similar to Xamarin.Forms.

Top Apps that have been Built by Using Xamarin Technology

 You’ll come across several well-known Xamarin apps which have been designed by making use of the Xamarin development platform. These are as follows:

• Storyo, which helps in the creation of videos from pictures

• The World Bank Survey App accountable for doing global surveys

• Just Giving, a humanitarian interface platform

• Olo App & FreshDirect, which are online platforms for ordering food and grocery respectively online

• Multi-platform gaming applications such as Skulls of the Shogun

• Alaska Airlines, an air travel partner providing all information, including booking tickets, checking in, picking a seat, changing a seat, ordering your preferred dish, etc.

For What Reason is Xamarin Considered the Best When it Comes to Cross-Platform App Development?

 Creating apps using Xamarin will be a fantastic way to save resources as well as time. Here, we have mentioned some of the most significant reasons why Xamarin should be used for your subsequent cross-platform app.

1. Xamarin facilitates faster development

In case you are searching for a powerful and sophisticated application that matches your unique business requirements, then Xamarin will be the best pick. Xamarin apps, which have been built using Visual Studio, are created using the C# language. This enables Xamarin to take care of cross-platform implementations quickly.

2. It does not take much time to create and is easy to use

Xamarin uses the .Net framework and C#, which are thought to be authentic developing environments for mobile platforms. As compared to others, Xamarin cross platform app development does not take much time whatsoever.

The technology uses a simple method of sharing codes across various mobile platforms, and thus, it does not take much time to develop apps. Xamarin includes

• standardized UI controls for providing a superior experience
• SDK integration which enables the addition of innovative features and auto-updates various app versions as well.

3. Provides remarkable flexibility

Xamarin provides you with the flexibility of selecting components as per your requirements. Useful resources of Xamarin such as UI controls, 3rd-party web services, and cross-platform libraries help achieve close-to-native performance.

4. Excellent application and data security

Xamarin features deep Azure Cloud integration. This can assure you of a fantastic app having full-proof data security. The application, as well as the backend Azure connectivity, features HTTP certificates as well as around-the-clock risk management fortification against malware.

5. Around-the-clock support from Azure Cloud and Xamarin Insights

Xamarin does not have many bugs to tackle, mainly because of the shared code. Xamarin TestCloud enables the developers to test applications with CI, fragmentation, and object-based UI testing. A powerful application development environment is provided by Azure Cloud, which helps the developers to create excellent mobile applications with benefits such as on-demand resources, scalability, cost-effectiveness, and high-availability. Besides this, Xamarin Insights allows the developers to verify the app’s performance.

Must Read: Xamarin Vs Flutter – A Complete Comparison

6. Rapid prototyping using Xamarin.Forms

Xamarin.Forms allow the developers to access a comprehensive cross-platform UI toolkit for building single-user interfaces that will work on almost any device. In this way, the developers will share more code altering the UI for each platform.

7. Native user experience

It is a fact that Xamarin has comprehensive access to native toolkits and APIs, which are used on Windows, iOS, and Android platforms. As a result, it can provide native performance and design for every single application.

This nativeness is feasible because of the use of platform-specific technologies and elements obtainable in Visual Studio and C#:

• Xamarin.Essentials library is responsible for providing access to core overlapping native APIs.

• Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin. Android provides .Net developers with access to comprehensive iOS and Android SDKs.

• Xamarin.Forms are responsible for exposing a UI (user interface) toolkit for the mobile platforms.

In this way, you will create one single solution having platform-specific interfaces by taking advantage of the unique elements in a single location.

8. Easy maintenance

You will not find it difficult to maintain applications that have been created with Xamarin. They share forms since code. In case you have to update apps and fix some problems, you can simply get it done in the source code, and every single change will be applied to the other solutions automatically. This will help to save time, finances, and developer involvement as well.

Apart from this, the community of Xamarin deserves proper respect. Comprehensive customer support is provided by them, which is backed with properly organized documentation and training facilities.

9. Xamarin happens to be an application for all the platforms

 It is a fact that Xamarin builds apps for all platforms. It does not matter whether you are searching for your desktop app’s mobile version or vice-versa, Xamarin will not disappoint you in the long run. Hire Xamarin Developers can create the most effective applications for a fantastic desktop and mobile experience simultaneously.

10. Can be updated easily

Xamarin, using the native frameworks, will take only a couple of days to update the most recent features in Android and iOS platforms.

11. Microsoft provides technical support

Xamarin is supported by Microsoft, which happens to be amongst the leading technology software organizations on the planet. This helps the platform guarantee stability, provide constant technical backing and quick resolution of issues.

Besides this, Microsoft’s access to comprehensive educational opportunities, including Xamarin courses that can be comprehensive and self-paced tech documents on the authorized Microsoft Learn platform. Therefore, the developers can receive support while working and improve their skills as well.

Conclusion

Xamarin is a top-notch cross-platform app development solution. It hardly matters whether you happen to be a developer who is on the lookout for an appropriate cross-platform technology or a company seeking higher user engagement via its business application; Xamarin will be the most effective tool for making things easier.