Choosing cross-platform development over native app development has become a growing trend for startups, organizations, and enterprises worldwide. With the increasing demand for mobile apps that can seamlessly integrate across different platforms, Xamarin has emerged as one of the leading cross-platform development frameworks.

What is Xamarin?

Developed in 2011, Xamarin is an open-source framework for cross-platform mobile app development. This technology empowers developers to share up to 90% of code to build native apps for major platforms such as Android, iOS, and Windows in C# and .NET. By leveraging this framework, developers can enjoy fast engineering, which further means faster time-to-market for a competitive advantage.

Market Usage of Xamarin

Xamarin has gained massive adoption globally, with over 13,000 apps powered by the framework, amounting to more than 2 billion downloads. The average market share of apps built on the Xamarin framework is 1.88%, while the highest market share of 6.54% is for business-related applications. With over 60,000 contributors from more than 37,000 different companies, Xamarin has a strong community support.

Why Companies Use Xamarin?

Xamarin offers several key highlights and advantages that make it an ideal choice for cross-platform app development:

  • Single Technological Stack: Xamarin uses a single language, C#, to build apps for all mobile platforms. This eliminates the need to switch between environments.
  • Faster Development: Xamarin enables sharing up to 80-90% of codebase to build and release apps across various platforms, significantly accelerating the development cycle.
  • Native User Experience: Xamarin ensures user experience and performance close to native by making use of native APIs and toolkits. It's challenging to tell the difference between a native and Xamarin application.
  • Low-Cost Development: Xamarin eliminates the need to hire multiple teams to launch apps for different mobile platforms, reducing costs and increasing efficiency.

Top 6 Apps Built with Xamarin

Let's take a look at some of the amazing apps made with Xamarin:

  • FreshDirect: A popular online grocery delivery service that initially launched its mobile applications coded in platform-specific languages. By shifting to C# from Java (Android) and Objective-C/Swift (iOS), FreshDirect accelerated its time-to-market.
  • UPS: The world's largest package delivery service, which initially built its mobile apps in platform-specific languages. By leveraging the Xamarin framework, UPS witnessed enhanced developers' productivity, reduced lines of code, and faster time-to-market.
  • Olo: A company that develops iOS and Android digital ordering and delivery apps for over 150 restaurants. Olo switched to Xamarin to ensure a faster time-to-market and unmatched user experience.
  • Alaska Airlines: The app enables exploring options, booking trips, checking in, moving with ease through airports, and finding all flight details. Developers at Alaska Airlines build cross-platform native iOS, Android, and Windows apps using C#.
  • BBC Good Food: A worldwide food media brand that filled its online content with recipes and food-related material. The company collaborated with NV Interactive to launch fully revamped iOS, Android, and UWP applications leveraging Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Xamarin and Visual Studio App Center.
  • Novarum DX: A company that designs diagnostic tests for detecting diseases like HIV, AIDS, and Ebola. The team at Novarum DX wanted to build and release an app that would allow users to detect outcomes via a smartphone camera.

Xamarin has proven itself as a powerful tool for building cross-platform mobile apps. With its ability to share up to 90% of code across different platforms, developers can enjoy faster engineering and faster time-to-market. As the demand for swift app development continues to grow, Xamarin is poised to play an even more significant role in the world of cross-platform development.