Novell has announced the availability of Mono for Android,
the first solution for developing Microsoft .NET applications for the
Android platform using Microsoft’s Visual Studio tool set.
With the addition of Mono for Android to its
existing Mono development tools, Novell is enabling Microsoft .NET and
C# developers using Visual Studio and other environments to use a
common code base to create applications for the industry’s most
widely-used mobile devices, including Android-based phones and tablets,
Apple iPad, Apple iPhone and Apple iPod Touch.
“With Mono for Android, we give developers access
to Android’s native APIs to deliver the native API experience,” said
Miguel de Icaza, Mono project founder and vice president of Developer
Platforms at Novell, in an interview with eWEEK. “They can use Visual
Studio and target the Android platform.”
According to statistics released by research firm Nielson,
Android has a 29 percent consumer market share of the smartphone
market, making it the most popular smartphone platform. With Mono for
Android, .NET developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) can
use Visual Studio and their existing skills to build a vast array of
Android-based applications and sell their products into this massive
market.
“Since the introduction of MonoTouch in 2009,
developers have experienced how Mono streamlines mobile application
development,” de Icaza said in a statement. “As a result, many asked us
to build a similar tool for Android. We developed Mono for Android to
give both individual developers and businesses a way of sharing their
code across multiple mobile platforms, increasing efficiency and reuse
of their C# and .NET expertise across the board.”
Mono for Android consists of the core Mono
runtime, bindings for native Android APIs, a Visual Studio 2010 plug-in
to develop Android applications, and a software development kit that
contains all the tools needed to build, debug and deploy applications.
Developers trained in Microsoft Visual Studio can stay within their
preferred integrated development environment (IDE), while using their
existing skills and .NET code, libraries and tools, as well as C#
programming knowledge, to create mobile applications for Android-based
devices. With the Visual Studio 2010 plug-in, engineers can develop,
debug and deploy their applications to an Android simulator, an Android
device or the Android Application Store.
De Icaza also said the popularity of the Mono
tools for Android quickly dwarfed that of the Mono tools for Apple’s
platforms. In fact, the Mono developer community for Android-related
issues is five times as large as that for developers using Mono-based
technologies to build apps for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, he said.
Meanwhile, Mono for Android complements MonoTouch,
Novell’s popular solution for developing applications for the iPad,
iPhone and iPod Touch, de Icaza said. Developers utilizing Mono for
Android and MonoTouch can save time and money by sharing common code
between iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Android phones and tablets, as
well as Windows Phone 7, Windows desktops and Windows Server. A Mono
for Android add-in also allows MonoDevelop users to develop on OS X.
“As a mobile software developer and middleware
vendor, Resco customers are enabled to use our products to develop
MonoTouch, and now Mono for Android applications for Android and Apple
devices,” said Michal Sartoris, senior developer at Resco, a maker of
software solutions for mobile devices, in a statement. “With more than
3,000 customers, our business success depends on us delivering
feature-rich, highly-quality applications to the market before our
competitors. Novell is providing us with innovative, cross-platform development tools that enable us to reduce the cost and resources required to create mobile applications.”
All editions of Mono for Android are available through http://shop.novell.com.
Mono for Android Enterprise Edition is available for $999 per developer
for a one-year subscription, which includes maintenance and updates. A
five-developer Enterprise license supports five concurrent developers
and is available for $3,999 per year. Mono for Android Professional
Edition is available for $399 per developer for a one-year
subscription. For a limited time, existing MonoTouch customers can
receive a 50 percent discount off a similar Mono for Android Edition by
using their activation code as a discount code.
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