Ceton, the company that creates some very cool devices that turn your PC into a DVR, has made its way to mobile. The Ceton Companion family of apps allows you to access your Windows Media Center PC to browse the program guide, schedule recordings, search for your favorite movie or TV show, and even choose a show and tell it on which TV to start playing. And it does all this from anywhere, even outside your home. “Our customers are true technology enthusiasts and we knew that we needed versions for Andriod, iOS, and Windows Phone that were optimized for each environment,” said James Montemagno, Ceton’s lead mobile developer. “We also knew that Xamarin was the platform to help us deliver.”
Writing high-quality, native applications for all three platforms that meets the needs of a very demanding customer base is no easy task. Trying to deliver them all at the same time is even tougher. Thanks to Xamarin it became a reality. The keys to success for Ceton were the ability to leverage existing C# skills and code, great tutorials and support from Xamarin, and extensive code-sharing across platforms. “By using C# and code re-use we were able to get 65% code sharing across the platforms.” said Montemagno.
User response for Ceton Companion apps has been fantastic. Currently, Ceton Companion apps stand in the top 100 Paid Entertainment category for iPhone and iPad, top 20 in the Paid Media and Video category for Android, and top 25 in the Paid Entertainment category for Windows Phone.
With Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 on the horizon Xamarin makes it easy to take existing apps to these new operating systems and device platforms as well. “We were able to get our Windows 8 app up and running in about 5 hours.” noted Montemagno.
Congratulations to James and the rest of the team at Ceton for using Xamarin to help their users never miss an episode of Game of Thrones.