Using Visual Studio and/or Xamarin you can develop for Windows Phone, Android and iOS

The Xamarin Platform offer

You can do native iOS, Android and Windows development in the C# language, with either the Xamarin Platform or Visual Studio, the Microsoft suite of component-based software development tools and other technologies for building powerful, high-performance applications.
Xamarin apps share code across all platforms. Target iOS, Android, Windows and Mac with a single, shared C# codebase. Use the same language, APIs and data structures on every platform. C# is the best language for mobile app development. With Xamarin, you write your apps entirely in C#, sharing the same code on iOS, Android, Windows, Mac and more. Anything you can do in Objective-C, Swift or Java, you can do in C#. Native UI, native API access & native performance.
Xamarin apps are built with standard, native user interface controls. Apps not only look the way the end user expects, they behave that way too. This can’t be achieved with other solutions.
On Wednesday 22 October 2014, join Xamarin Certified Developer Jesse Liberty, master consultant for Falafel Software covering the latest on Xamarin Forms from XAML, to data-binding and MVVM. This is a one hour webinar and perfect for anyone just getting started or currently using Xamarin.

Get the Windows Phone API in a nice poster

The Windows Phone API, a nice resource to have.

Posterpedia is an interactive app (for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8) that uses technical posters as a reference for understanding Microsoft technologies. This graphical, easy to understand format, links directly to Microsoft TechNet and Microsoft MSDN content. Remember those huge and neat paper posters that started circulating about a decade ago with Visual Studio and .NET technologies? Well, this is the same proposition in a digital and more manageable format. Visit http://www.serverposterpedia.com/, though you could also get them individually in PDF format. This wonderful and useful collection of posters is broken down by Microsoft products: Windows Server (11 posters), SQL Server (3), Business Intelligence (1), Solutions (15), Exchange Server (5), Lync Server (2), System Center (1), Microsoft Azure (10), Office (2), SharePoint Server (23), etc. HOWEVER, since Posterpedia is mostly for Windows 8,if you want to get the poster pictured above, go here. It's a great resource to have. API, as you recall, stands for Application Programming Interface, and it is a set of programming instructions and standards for accessing a Web-based, or desktop-based, software application or Web tool. An API basically simplifies and enhances the work of a developer.

Let's start with the Tools ...and they are Free!

Your work bench in Visual Studio Express to start your development adventure

I found this very useful page where the author explains in rich detail the Ultimate guide & FAQ to setting-up a Windows Phone development environment. Of course you could have gone yourself to the Microsoft download page, but it is always nice to have everything in one place, with all the instructions and this is that place. You are going to need Visual Studio 2013 and the Windows Phone 8.1 SDK (Software Developer Kit) and the Windows 8.1 SDK (if you also want to build Windows Store apps for Windows tablets, laptops and desktops). Of course if you want to run the Windows Phone emulator you will need to be running Windows 8.1 Pro as well, in which this technology it's only possible using the virtual machines magic of Hyper-V. It may sound complicated but this post at Age of Mobility (a great blog), will take you by the hand. A few years ago, in order to start programming and developing for Windows using Microsoft tools used to be an expensive proposition. You would need to buy Visual Studio (one of the best developing environments in the IT industry, hands down) which was actually expensive, but nowadays and for sometime now, Microsoft, using the open source 'business model', and just what the industry demanded, decided to give away these tools which are easily identified with an  "Express" suffix in their names. Thus, Visual Studio Express, Visual Basic Express, etc. I hope you get everything set-up, up and running. If you have any problems or questions, please, contact us.

Welcome to the World of Windows Phone Development!

Granted. In the $23 billion mobile Apps industry Microsoft Windows Phone is in a distant third place behind Android (with a 78 percent worldwide market share in 2013) and Apple (with a 16 percent market share). However it does not mean in the least this revolutionary mobile operating system, this platform, is of less value or less capable. On the contrary, it offers practically everything an iPhone or an Android phone provide, plus the added extra security of the new and constantly improved Windows ecosystem. You can start with the Windows Phone 8 Development for Absolute Beginners Series, or with the step-by-step guide Getting started with developing for Windows Phone 8. Now, if you are more interested in the big picture, designing for Windows in general, visit the Windows Development Center. It may also happen that you don't know much about this type of smartphone, so this useful guide will get you started.
So, this blog hopes to guide you into this neat and nimble mobile operating system, including devices and programming tools. Let's start.