One constant truth about mobile app development is that there is nothing that’s constant for long. New technologies and trends are reshaping the application development ecosystem. There is a marked shift towards light weight, fast-loading apps that reduce the time to market and overall development cost – as well as providing above-par user experience. Enterprises are embracing mobility with a focus on result-oriented customer experience across multiple platforms. However, businesses are also working on tighter budgets and shorter timelines to release their app. Here are a few ways in which Xamarin is speeding up the app development timeline: 1)Multi-platform capabilities- Xamarin enables you to use a single codebase across platforms, be it Windows, iOS or Android. You don’t have to rewrite the code for each platform. Xamarin enables code sharing up to 75% across platforms leading to faster release cycles using fewer developer resources. 2)Lean development methodology- Another trend that has gained momentum for enterprise apps is the lean methodology – that advocates building only a minimum viable product, or an MVP for a quick release. This is followed by collecting data and reviews in line with the build-measure-learn feedback loop. The feedback is then used to continually inform and improve the development. The process operates on shorter, iterative cycles called sprints wherein updates are released in shorter 2-4 week periods. Xamarin’s philosophy is to support this agile development process – bringing efficiency to the build. 3)Xamarin.Forms- Xamarin.Forms is a natively backed UI toolkit abstraction that lets you build native UIs for iOS, Android and Windows Phone from a shared, single C# codebase. By using the native controls of target platform, Xamarin.Forms delivers the native experience for each platform. Xamarin.Forms offers more than 40 cross-platform layouts and controls that are mapped to native controls at runtime. These apps don’t face the limitations of other toolkits like browser sandboxing, limited APIs or poor performance at the same time rapid prototyping and shared code up to 100% ensures that apps are built really fast. 4)Powerful mBaaS- Many organizations building their mobile apps spend a lot of time and effort in business critical functions like offline/online setup, data synchronization with cloud, social media integration etc. These functions use up a great deal of time and resources. Instead, they could be managed through a robust mobile backend system (mBaaS) like Azure Mobile Apps Service. Xamarin facilitates seamless integration with Azure mBaaS enables businesses to focus on their core tasks like improving efficiency and user experience. 5)Xamarin Test Cloud- Testing mobile apps for quality, consistency and stability can be quite the challenge considering the number of devices and platforms. Xamarin Test Cloud automates application testing on thousands of mobile devices using the cloud. It allows developers to test up to 2000 devices in the cloud and test any features or simulate user actions like pinching, swiping, tapping or scrolling. Test Cloud reports on performance issues within any OS with step-by-step monitoring and tracking of memory and performance. With Xamarin, building mobile applications is accelerated with the power of the native platforms and a number of strong features like complete binding for the underlying SDKs, modern language constructs, modern integrated development environment etc. Owing to its powerful features and reduced time-to-market, Xamarin has filled a void in the app development market where developers can use a modern language to ship quality apps quickly across all platforms. Have you used Xamarin’s sophisticated framework yet? What are your views? Please let us know in the comments section below.