Is it possible to develop native Android and IOS Mobile Application using .NET?

Question

I like to develop android and IOS native mobile application using Visual Studio 2010. Is it possible in .NET ? If it is possible kindly share me the details for the development.

Answer 1

Visual Studio does not support, say, writing Objective-C code to target and deploy to an iPhone, but there's more to be said I think. You're kind of asking two different questions here. In you title you want to know if you can develop (native) mobile applications targeting different platforms using .NET. The short, simplified answer to this question in my opinion is "yes".

For example, Xamarin (a.k.a. Mono Touch) may be an option. However, your code will not be compiled and ran "as is" on the different devices, but rather "re-written" for the targeted platform, e.g. to Objective-C in the case of iOS. So, in other words the result of your efforts will be a truly native application. (You also have the option of mixing C# and Objective-C, e.g. for performance to access certain native C libraries and such.)

In your actual question (not the title), however, you're introducing the question of IDE, and that's another one. Obviously you can write code libraries and such in your .NET-compatible IDE of choice, e.g. Visual Studio or SharpDevelop, but you are depending on Xcode for deployment (Xamarin integrates to some extent). On the bright side, this means that you have the option of utilizing special tools like the UI Designer.

Answer 2

iOS apps use Objective-C and Android uses Java. You could make the apps in HTML 5 - but then it won't be native. So no, is your answer. Also you need Xcode to build and submit apps to the app store for iOS. Not too sure how it works with Android.