I'm not sure the casual indie developer is their target market. Microsoft has always been strong in the enterprise market, thus a tool (Mono) that allows devel

I'm not sure the casual indie developer is their target market. Microsoft has always been strong in the enterprise market, thus a tool (Mono) that allows developers to write for Android while staying in the Microsoft ecosystem will probably have huge appeal for large enterprise development groups. Those kind of users usually don't have an issue with a tool priced under say $1000. I'm certainly not saying that no indie developers use Microsoft tool, because they do. And sure, it would be great if there was a free open source version of this tool available. But I suspect there is a nice market for these tools that has deep enough pockets to pay the licensing fees.