Open Source Frameworks Unveil Support for Windows Phone 8

Posted by Kerry Godes
Senior Manager, Worldwide Marketing and Operations

Last week’s //build/ 2012 conference highlighted how developers can take advantage of their existing skills and favorite languages and frameworks to extend their market reach and bring great apps to the Windows 8 platform. There was a spotlight on the newly launched Windows Phone 8 Developer Platform, which is now supported by several popular open source and cross-platform frameworks.

In order to achieve the vision of Windows Phone as  “the world’s most personal smartphone”, Microsoft relies on a talented developer ecosystem that is fueled by companies, communities, and people who are creating offerings and resources to help these developers quickly and easily build or port apps for Windows Phone.
 
We were fortunate to work with many open source communities leading up to last week’s platform launch. Popular tools and frameworks like Apache Cordova (known as PhoneGap), Sencha Touch 2, jQuery Mobile, and several others are providing choice and expanding market opportunity for Windows Phone developers.

“Nearly 50% of Sencha customers have expressed interest in building apps for Windows Phone 8 in the next 6 to 12 months,” said Abraham Elias, CTO of Sencha Inc. “Supporting Windows Phone 8 is a natural choice for Sencha to enable our customers to build universal apps for mobile devices.”

This extended support by diverse open source and cross-platform frameworks was made possible in part by new features in Windows Phone 8, namely native C++ programming and Internet Explorer 10 expanded HTML5 support.

For more details on how developers can get started with these frameworks today, check out the Interoperability @ Microsoft blog. Let us know in the comments what Windows Phone 8 apps you’d like to see in the future.