My Xamarin acquisition predictions validated!
Well, when Microsoft acquired Xamarin I said that the only reason I could think of would be to either reduce the price or make it free, and more than likely a part of Visual Studio.
At //build/ yesterday and today they announced that Xamarin is indeed going to be a part of Visual Studio. More though, it will be a free part of even the Community edition!!!
Some of the Xamarin advanced functionality is only available in the paid tiers, but it is added value to existing subscribers so no additional cost. And that is not really worth mentioning. Anyone who cares pays for Xamarin today, so continuing to pay is not important.
I should really be a business analyst for this industry. Many reports were WAY off on the reason. Others were far less sure about the motive. To me this was obvious.
To recap what I said earlier. Xamarin was not competing with Microsoft. They were dependent upon Microsoft to a degree. And their product and services drove people to .Net. In other words, there was really no viable threat that Xamarin would diverge from their current path and hurt Microsoft that way, or steal their business or anything. In fact, they helped them in one of the biggest ways possible. Xamarin kept mobile devs in the .Net stack.
There is no business reason to buy a company which is helping you for free and which shows no signs of stopping. Buying a company is ALWAYS a gamble. If you tweak their business model it might break the profitability, but at the same time, there is never any absolute guarantee that the companies existing business model is sustainable.
So, the only reason that made sense to buy Xamarin was to accelerate adoption of a product which bolstered the MS ecosystem. And the easiest way to do that is reduce costs and integrate more deeply.
What made the most sense following an acquisition was to give the bulk of Xamarin to devs for free. It makes the most compelling argument possible for devs to switch to Windows development. And that is what happened. For the first time, I believe, there is a cost effective and compelling reason to do native Android and iOS development in .Net. And that could be a big deal in the long run.
At //build/ yesterday and today they announced that Xamarin is indeed going to be a part of Visual Studio. More though, it will be a free part of even the Community edition!!!
Some of the Xamarin advanced functionality is only available in the paid tiers, but it is added value to existing subscribers so no additional cost. And that is not really worth mentioning. Anyone who cares pays for Xamarin today, so continuing to pay is not important.
I should really be a business analyst for this industry. Many reports were WAY off on the reason. Others were far less sure about the motive. To me this was obvious.
To recap what I said earlier. Xamarin was not competing with Microsoft. They were dependent upon Microsoft to a degree. And their product and services drove people to .Net. In other words, there was really no viable threat that Xamarin would diverge from their current path and hurt Microsoft that way, or steal their business or anything. In fact, they helped them in one of the biggest ways possible. Xamarin kept mobile devs in the .Net stack.
There is no business reason to buy a company which is helping you for free and which shows no signs of stopping. Buying a company is ALWAYS a gamble. If you tweak their business model it might break the profitability, but at the same time, there is never any absolute guarantee that the companies existing business model is sustainable.
So, the only reason that made sense to buy Xamarin was to accelerate adoption of a product which bolstered the MS ecosystem. And the easiest way to do that is reduce costs and integrate more deeply.
What made the most sense following an acquisition was to give the bulk of Xamarin to devs for free. It makes the most compelling argument possible for devs to switch to Windows development. And that is what happened. For the first time, I believe, there is a cost effective and compelling reason to do native Android and iOS development in .Net. And that could be a big deal in the long run.
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