The Xamarin team has issued news detailing its work with MIPS Technologies Inc. that has resulted in Xamarin's Mono for Android platform now supporting application development for MIPS-based Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" devices.
Xamarin's development platform targets cross-platform mobile applications targeting phones and tablets running iOS, Android, and Windows. MIPS is a provider of industry-standard processor architectures and cores for digital home, networking, and mobile applications.
The coming together of the two firms to produce Mono for Android 4.0 is hoped to allow the millions of C# developers to use a unified framework and language, with access to the native platform to create cross-platform apps running across all three major mobile platforms: Android, iOS, and Windows.
"We are excited to work with Xamarin so that millions of .NET and C# developers can bring their tools, skills, and creativity to create consumer and enterprise apps and games for the growing number of MIPS-Based Android devices," said Gideon Intrater, vice president of marketing, MIPS Technologies.
Xamarin's Mono for Android gives .NET developers the ability to create embedded applications that run on MIPS architecture, which is already adopted widely in a broad range of consumer devices, including cell phones, tablets, set-top boxes, and digital TVs.
"Mono for Android provides the power of Visual Studio and the .NET framework that developers are used to, along with complete access to all of the native APIs and UI toolkits unique to each operating system, allowing them to create native user experiences on each platform, while sharing up to 90% of their source code," said Nat Friedman, CEO of Xamarin. "In particular, now corporate, consumer, and games developers can target lower-cost Android devices."
"By working closely with MIPS to make Mono for Android work well on MIPS-based devices, Xamarin will help developers bridge another fork in Android fragmentation, so developers can build native apps without worrying about the underlying architecture where the application will be executing," said Seth Jones, lead analyst at Vision Mobile, a leading market analysis and strategy firm based in London.
