In a recent announcement, software giant Microsoft has revealed that it has acquired Xamarin, the company which is credited with bringing native Android and iOS development into Visual Studio.

Microsoft’s acquisition of Xamarin comes after a lot of speculation about whether the move would materialize or not. The acquisition is likely to be completed before Microsoft’s 2016 Build developer event which is scheduled to be held in March-end.

Xamarin is the company which offers a tool-suite that chiefly focuses on assisting mobile developers through the creation and maintenance of their apps. The acquisition of the company by Microsoft will result in the addition of cross-platform tools to Microsoft’s development platform.

The Xamarin acquisition is a noteworthy move by Microsoft because it will pave the way for the availability of Android and iOS platforms on .Net; thanks to the incorporation of Xamarin into the official .Net toolchain. As such, Xamarin acquisition will enable Microsoft to ensure that the Universal Windows Platform of Windows 10 becomes truly universal.

Highlighting the fact that the merger of Xamarin with Microsoft will unfold the availability of cross-platform UI tooling to Microsoft’s developer platform, Scott Guthrie -- EVP of the Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise group -- said in a blog post: “The combination of Xamarin, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Team Services, and Azure provides a complete mobile app dev solution that provides everything you need to develop, test, deliver and instrument mobile apps for every device.”