Xamarin

What is the Xamarin platform?

We love tools that help our clients save time, but some of them are easily misunderstood. Here's the scoop on Xamarin.

Lee Richardson

• 2 min read
What is the Xamarin platform?

An image depicting several mobile devicesXamarin promotes sharing

Xamarin's platform promotes code sharing as much as possible. Apps are authored in C# and share on average 75% of code across platforms. The Xamarin.Forms API allows native user interfaces to be built in C# or XAML, which can increase code sharing to 100%.

Infographic image showing how an idea turns into a native app using multiple platforms.

 


An icon depicting a clock with circuits

Xamarin apps are fast

Xamarin apps are compiled to a native binary. Mono, a fully-funtional implementation of the .NET runtime, is bundled with the app to provide access to platform-native APIs. This gives Xamarin apps strong performance in demanding situations, like media and complex data visualization.

 

An image showing examples of media and data visualization

A graphic showing iOS app performance using Xamarin.

A graphic showing Android performance using Xamarin.

*Source: Harry Cheung, Mobile App Performance Redux