Jul 20
SUSE, an Attachmate Business Unit, and Xamarin, a startup co-founded by Mono legend Miguel de Icaza, are partnering to provide continued support for Mono, the open-source .NET Framework. The agreement grants Xamarin a broad, perpetual license to all intellectual property covering Mono, MonoTouch, Mono for Android, and Mono Tools for Visual Studio. Xamarin will assume support for these products and continue to develop and sell them. Existing customers can purchase upgrades. Priority support is also available for an extra fee.
Xamarin’s immediate plans for both MonoTouch and Mono for Android is to make sure that the major bugs are fixed. I just received notification today that a critical bug open in MonoTools since last October has finally been assigned to be fixed. This is excellent news for .NET developers and provides further evidence that .NET isn’t dead. Xamarin provides the best way to build fast, native .NET apps on iOS and Android.
SUSE/Xamarin Press Release
Announcement by Miguel de Icaza
May 26
In spite of having a decade head start with Windows Mobile and the Pocket PC, Microsoft somehow completely missed the initial smartphone wave and is now playing a desperate game of catchup.
Apple released its first iPhone in 2007, essentially defined the smartphone ecosystem, and jumped to an impressive early lead. But with a more open platform and cheaper hardware, Google Android has grabbed a commanding 35% share of smartphone subscribers. Apple is holding flat around 25%.
Microsoft entered the smartphone market late in 2010 with Windows Phone 7 (WP7), which was already generations behind competing platforms and lacked key features like copy/paste and multitasking. WP7 is also incompatible with previous versions of Windows Mobile, so existing users have no allegiance to the new Windows phones, and hence are just as likely to switch to iPhone or Android. As a result, Microsoft’s share of the smartphone market is only 8% and dropping.
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