Wiley Professional iPhone Programming with MonoTouch and .NET/C# 978-0-470-63782-1 User Manual

The history of the iPhone and its mindshare

 

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A short history of Mono and its relationship to the .NET Framework

 

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How MonoTouch opens the iPhone to .NET Developers

 

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Why MonoTouch is so attractive to developers

 

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The past several years have seen an amazing growth in the use of smartphones, and USA Today 
recently reported how smartphones have become an indispensable part of people’s lives. 

Although Windows-based computers running 32-bit x86 or 64-bit x64 processors dominate 
the desktop computer marketplace, and the .NET Framework is the dominant development 
environment for the Windows platform, no single vendor or platform dominates the mobile 
device marketplace; devices based on Symbian, Research in Motion (Blackberry), Windows 
Mobile, Android, and other platforms are available. In addition, devices may run the same 
operating system and be presented to the user in separate form factors. This fracture in the 
marketplace is problematic for developers —  how can they take a development framework, or 
tool, that they already know and use that knowledge in a device that has a large and growing 
market share?

This chapter looks at how the largest segment of developers can target the smartphone with 
the highest mindshare, and that the smartphone is growing faster in marketshare than any 
other device.

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