Apple has acquired a startup which created app development tools for Android and plans to make it iOS-exclusive in the coming weeks.

The startup, Buddybuild, is based in Canada and will soon be folded into Apple’s Xcode engineering group. Buddybuild provides developers with a more efficient method of testing and tweaking their apps. 

Integrating these features into Xcode will undoubtedly please iOS developers, but those who build apps for Android — either alongside, or exclusively — will be left scrambling to find alternatives.

The cut-off date for Android is March 1st, which doesn’t leave much time for switching from a tool which quickly grew a dedicated fanbase.

In a blog post, the company wrote:

We're excited to share that the buddybuild team has joined the Xcode engineering group at Apple to build amazing developer tools for the entire iOS community.

We've always been proud to be a Canadian company, so we're also pleased that we will be staying right here in Vancouver — a hotbed of developer and engineering talent.

The buddybuild service will remain available to existing customers to build, test, and ship iOS apps to testers through buddybuild.com.

As of today, we are no longer accepting new customers. Existing Free Starter plans and Android app development will be discontinued on March 1, 2018.

If you have questions about an existing account, please contact us at: team@buddybuild.com

Development tools are quickly being taken off the market by tech giants paying large sums to bolster their own platforms. While this is great news for startups, it’s causing anxiety for app developers not knowing whether their favourite tool(s) will remain available.

Apple is yet to formally announce when Buddybuild’s features will start appearing in Xcode, but at the latest we’ll hear more during Apple’s annual developer conference around June.

What are your thoughts on Apple’s latest acquisition? Let us know in the comments.