New tools for Windows Phone 8 save developers time and money

The Windows Phone developer ecosystem is enriched every day by companies, communities, and people who are creating offerings and resources to help developers quickly and easily build or port great apps for Windows Phone. Over the past year, we’ve started collecting these offerings, and we’ve created a list of Windows Phone Developer partner resources, in which we identify commercial and open-source resources in the following categories:

• Tools: Development environments, utilities, frameworks, and libraries to help you build, generate, and debug apps during the development process.
• UI components: UI elements like list controls, button, charting, and other visual components,
• Web API: Cloud-based services like notification, mapping, back-end processing, ad networks, and leaderboard services that developers can consume through a web API.

We’ve seen strong response to these offers, so we’re focusing even more attention in this area for Windows Phone 8. We’re thrilled to highlight today more than 30 commercial and open-source offerings by companies and organizations that have jumped on board.
On the open-source front, we engaged with communities early in the process so they could add Windows Phone 8 support in popular tools and frameworks. Read the details.

Let’s take a closer look at the partners who are announcing today their support for Windows Phone 8 at the //BUILD conference.

Native gaming

One significant feature of the Windows Phone 8 development platform is support for the native C++ programming model. Native code offers a number of benefits related to code reuse, and it opens up opportunities for game engines, physics, animation, audio libraries, and more. The following organizations are announcing Windows Phone 8 support:

• Unity Technology demonstrated today on stage at //Build for the first time, the Unity tools and engine that they used to create a game for Windows Phone 8. Read the Unity announcement and if you’re at //Build visit Unity Technology on the expo floor.
• Havok, who showed an early preview of Windows Phone support last June, is showing off its Vision Engine at //Build in the Gaming session (which will be live streamed). Read Havok’s announcement. //Build attendees can visit Havok on Windows Phone Booth.
• Marmalade announced support for Windows Phone 8 with the Marmalade SDK. //Build attendees can visit Marmalade and see a demo on Windows Phone Booth.
• Cocos2d gaming framework is coming to Windows Phone 8. See the details.
• SharpDX, an open-source C#/Managed DirectX API for.NET, is now available for Windows Phone 8.
• Ogre, the popular open-source 3-D graphics rendering engine, is coming to Windows Phone Check the preview.
• FMOD Ex, the popular audio library, is coming to Windows Phone 8.
• Autodesk Scaleform is confirmed for Windows Phone 8.
• Audiokinetic Wwise audio pipeline solution is confirmed for Windows Phone 8.

Tools, cross-platform frameworks, HTML5, libraries, and UI

We’re seeing growing support for Windows Phone 8 among cross-platform tools, frameworks, and libraries vendors. Many of them take advantage of extensive support for HTML5 in Internet Explorer 10. Here’s what’s new:

• Adobe PhoneGap framework (aka Apache Cordova) is coming to Windows Phone 8. //Build attendees can visit Adobe on the Expo floor.
• appMobi added support today for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8.
• Appcelerator announced its plans to deliver Titanium, its app development solution for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8, in the first half of 2013.
• Scrirra Construct 2, an HTML5 game engine that lets you build games without writing code, now targets Windows Phone 8.
• Trigger.io’s HTML5 development framework called Forge, now targets Windows Phone 8.
• YoYo GameMaker: Studio, an HTML5-based game development tool, is opening its Beta program for Windows Phone 8 soon. See the details.
• SQLite, cross-platform, open-source database engine is now available on Windows Phone 8.
• Sencha is announcing its Sencha Touch UI HTML5 framework, now supporting Windows Phone 8.
• A new jQuery Mobile theme for Windows Phone 8 is available.
• Trigger.io’s HTML5 development framework, Forge, now targetsWindows Phone 8.

On the C#/XAML development side, partners and communities have been getting ready. Here are the early birds who are supporting Windows Phone 8:

• MVVM Light Toolkit gets a fresh new version that supports Windows Phone 8. Read the details on Laurent Bugnion’s blog.
• Telerik today released a new version of its RadControls, with new, unique controls for Windows Phone 8.  //Build attendees can visit Telerik on the Expo floor.
• Infragistics now includes Windows Phone 8 support with its NetAdvantage offering. //Build attendees can visit Infragistics on the Expo floor
• XAML Spy, the visual runtime inspector debugging tool from First Floor Software, adds support for Windows Phone 8 today.
• Xamarin releases Xamarin.Mobile, a single API developers can use for common device services like contacts, camera, and geolocation, with Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 support. //Build attendees can visit Xamarin on the Expo floor

Web API, back ends as a service, cloud services

Cloud-based service providers are essential for developers to be able to expand app capabilities, connect users and scale, promote and monetize, analyze usage, and track issues. Today at //Build, we’re presenting the partners who are aligning with Windows Phone 8 in this area.

• Adduplex app promotion service and control is available for Windows Phone 8 today.
• Bugsense, real-time error reporting and quality metrics for app health is available for Windows Phone 8.
• Buddy’s back end as a service for cloud-connected mobile apps has a fresh edition of its SDK for Windows Phone 8.
• Crittercism, a cross platform, real-time diagnostics and crash analysis service launches Windows Phone 8 support. //Build attendees can visit Crittercism on the Expo floor.
• Flurry Analytics service, which lets developers measure audience reach, engagement, retention, conversions, and more, announced support for Windows Phone 8 coming this quarter. //Build attendees can visit Flurry on the Expo floor
• Push.IO cloud-based push notification and user segmentation service is ready for Windows Phone 8.
• Photon Cloud real-time, multiplayer cloud service from Exit Games releases a new SDK for Windows Phone 8 today.,
• Smaato advertising platform, through which developers can access over 90 ad networks worldwide, has expanded its Smaato SDK to support Windows Phone 8,
• UrbanAirship will announce tomorrow its beta push messaging support for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 devices. //Build attendees can visit UrbanAirship on the Expo floor.

Finally, Bsquare, a Microsoft Gold Certified partner that specializes in providing engineering services and production-ready software products for the smart device market, launched today a porting service publishers can use to port existing apps from various platforms to Windows 8 or Windows Phone 8 quickly and affordably, with prices starting at $10,000 (USD).

Welcome, everybody, to the Windows Phone 8 developer ecosystem!

Here’s a snapshot of today’s partner announcements:

If you want to suggest a resource, feel free to contact me on Twitter @jccim, include the hashtag #wpdevecosystem with a description and link.