Microsoft is buying a company that’s key to its cross-platform future

Microsoft today says it's acquiring mobile app development startup Xamarin for an undisclosed sum, giving the company a tool for building mobile apps that can work across iOS, Android, and Windows phones. Xamarin, which has 15,000 customers including large brand names like Coca-Cola and JetBlue, allows developers to code in a single programming language while designing an app to look native to each platform. Xamarin also offers a way for developers to test those apps using thousands of cloud-hosted devices. One of the four-year-old startup's main products relies on Microsoft's Visual Studio software, so this acquisition is a natural pairing.

"We have had a longstanding relationship with Xamarin," writes Scott Guthrie, Microsoft's...

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