I was talking with a few friends today that are working in a store selling phones about new phones and what phone we would get in the future. I said that I probably would get an iphone 5, and when they asked why I said because there will be an app for the tool I use to study Chinese on iPhone. However, my friends thought that buying an ipnone would probably be a big mistake, because (as they put it) apple is a sinking ship, and android is taking over big time. iPhone have had it's time but more and more people are getting droid phones. They say that although iphone is still a very popular phone, droid sales just keep increasing whereas iphone sales keep dropping, and that the future was a no contest android future, with iphone being used by just a few hardcore apple fans.

Since these guys work in the phone business, I would say that they know what they talk about, and personally I hate apple with "locked phones" etc, but I would easily buy one if iOS would get an skritter dedicated app, and android wouldn't.

So, I guess my question is, will there be an android app for skritter as well, or will I have to buy an iPhone :/ ?

This may not be the most objective source, as I just did a quick dig, but if your friends say that iPhone sales are dropping, then they might be offering you advice based off of outdated information:

http://applefanboynews.com/tag/sales-graph/

If your friends meant that the iPhone is losing market share, then maybe it's true in some markets, but not in the US (see the first graph):

http://www.reviewstl.com/mobile-market-steady-apple-poised-explode-iphone5-0831/

You can see that Android is growing like crazy; that part is true. Android is likely to keep growing. But I don't see much evidence that the iPhone will start shrinking.

There are also iPod Touches and iPads. If you don't like Apple phones but still want to use Skritter, you could stay on Android and then get one of those devices for Skritter. You then wouldn't need to try to time our development cycles with your phone upgrade cycles.

Anyway, to answer your question: we don't know if there will be a dedicated Skritter app for Android. We'll have to see how the iOS app does, first. If it's a big hit, then we'll probably want to make an Android version. If it's not as awesome as we expect, then we will probably just stick with the Flash-based Android approach for now.

Judging by how things are shaping up, I think it'll be a big hit, but our timeline for making an Android app would still be something like (release time of iOS version) + (development time of Android version), and these things are not quick to develop.

In pure phone activations, Android is beating Apple. But I'd hardly call Apple a sinking ship, because there are more to the numbers than just activations.

I read tech blogs, and I constantly read that according to surveys and marketing research, iPhone users consistently spend on average much more on their apps than Android users. This means it is much more profitable for developers to make iPhone apps. This is why many developers still prefer to work on the iPhone, because while it is potentially a smaller market, it is more profitable.

There is a lot more to it. But keep in mind, even if you buy an Android phone, you can still use the Skritter site because Android allows flash. As for an app, I am sure Skritter will eventually release one, but the iPhone version is the only one they have actively discussed working on.

I have an HTC desire HD and I am very pleased with the size and quality of the display. Apart form a few glitches that are being dealt with (or will be very soon) the android flash mashup works great.

I'd also like the point that it was also very easy for Android sales to grow much quicker recently because it was such a small percentage until fairly recently. Apple has been selling iPhones since 2007, where as popular Android phones only started appearing around 2010 to my knowledge (according to wikipedia, androids market share was only 3% in 2009 so not very wide even just 2 years ago).

Another thing is the iPhone 5, a lot of people are waiting till that hits (expected quite soon) instead of getting the iPhone4 now which will be outdated in a few months.

Basically I'm just agreeing with everyone else. Android is definitely gaining but no way in hell Apple is sinking ... Nokia is the sinking ship of the phone industry :P

(Note: Full disclosure I own an iPhone and think it kicks the crap out of my brothers Android phone, but he has the exact same opinion in reverse.)

Although that probably just makes choosing between apple and android harder ... sorry

These where the 2 first google results I found:


http://www.isuppli.com/Mobile-and-Wireless-Communications/News/Pages/Googles-Android-to-Outstrip-Apples-iOS-by-2012-iSuppli-Forecasts.aspx

"Google Inc. is expected to prevail in a key battleground for its wireless war with Apple Inc., as the smart phone market share of the Android Operating System (OS) rises to surpass that of the iPhone’s iOS in 2012, iSuppli Corp. predicts.

Android will be used in 75 million smart phones by 2012, up from 5 million in 2009. Meanwhile, iOS usage will amount to 62 million in 2012, up from 25 million in 2009.

This will give Android a 19.4 percent of the global market for smart phone OSes in 2012, up from 2.7 percent in 2009. Apple’s iOS for the iPhone will see its share rise to 15.9 percent in 2012, up from 13.8 percent in 2009. In 2014, Android’s share of global smart phone OS usage will rise to 22.8 percent, while iOS will decline to 15.3 percent."

http://gigaom.com/2010/08/02/android-sales-overtake-iphone-in-the-u-s/

"Sales of Google Android phones in the U.S. are rising so quickly, the devices have outsold Apple handsets for the first time on record. New smartphone subscribers choosing Google phones accounted for 27 percent of U.S. smartphone sales, the Nielsen Company will announce this morning, nudging past the 23 percent share held by Apple. But Android isn’t just a U.S. phenomenon: Canalys today estimates that Android handset sales grew 886 percent worldwide from the year ago quarter."

I dont know, but it seems that the predictions that my friends made are pretty much the same as what you can find on the net.

That prediction states nothing about apple being a sinking ship from my reading :P It does say android's market share will outstrip apple's share by 2014 but makes no claim apple is "sinking ship" or that your iPhone will be suddenly unsupported or abandoned.

I might just taking issue with a turn of phrase, rather than their real point however :P

Whatever you buy you win though, people seem to be having great success with Androids phones based on other forum threads, or you get the dedicated iPhone app, no down side.

Apple is a sinking ship!!! I beg to differ. Its stock is at $372 at the moment. Its market valuation is more than 300 billion. Mac sales continue to grow and people who have Macs might very well buy iPhones and visa-versa. The Mac and the iPhone are high end devices and a fairer comparison of sales might be to comparable PCs and Android phones.

I have nothing against Android phones, though, and might very well buy one if I had the money.

The issue is that some of the comments Nick has made imply that the iPhone version will have a lot of features that are really needed in a mobile Skritter yet aren't in the Android version. I am afraid I can't remember the specific comments right now. With that said, Android is on the rise in a huge way and to relegate Droid users to second class citizens is a mistake of epic proportions. He needs to do the Apple version first. That is a given since right now they have nothing. The second he is done with the Apple version, he needs to work on a dedicated Droid one.

As for me and what I use, an iPod touch when overseas is incredibly useful. My next phone will be a Droid, though. There is no way I will carry around two devices when walking around the US. I personally don't mind Skrittering on a computer, but even I can understand how a Droid user will feel jipped if the iPhone users have all of the bells and whistles while the Droid user just has the soso version. That does nothing but give the customer the feeling of being second rate. Second rate customers go elsewhere. If he makes both applications, there is a chance I will buy both. I would use one when in the US and one when overseas.

Nick HAD to start working on a smartphone app. Those phones aren't going away. With that said, he opened a real can of worms when he did.

Does anybody use Skritter on an Android right now? Are you happy with it?

I'm thinking about getting a new phone and I'm torn between Iphone and Android right now. The ability to use Skritter might just be the thing that tips me either way. :)

I tried using Skritter on someone's Samsung phone (the latest one). It wasn't particularly smooth. It certainly worked, but the jerkiness would put me off using it. I would personally wait for the iphone app. (Actually - on the upside, the Android one loads my pictures! Perhaps a faster future Android phone would work best in my case... -- Ah, but then, no offline mode).

The 7 inch GALAXY Tab works great.

@nickybr38 I use it on Android when I'm away from home and have nothing to do. I wouldn't say it works great, but it's OK, and you can certainly make progress with it.

@DaXia I'm a computer programmer who works on Android phones, so you might think I would agree with your pro-Android friends, but you shouldn't believe anybody who says they can tell you the future. In fact if they work in a store selling phones, I would say they are highly unreliable sources. With that said, if openness is important to you, Android might be a good option for you.

James

I've never used an Apple anything in my life... I'm really allergic to Apples and somehow Apple electronics don't appeal to me. :)

Haha. Thanks for the response guys. I'll take that into consideration. Maybe they'll let me try it out before I buy?

I mean great relative to other android devices. The desktop still works the best over all.

Ok, calling apple a sinking ship might been a bit too much, but the way things are looking at the moment, the future definitely belongs to android, unless apple does some very big changes to their concept.
Most people likes freedom, and the ability to be able to choose and customize things their own way, and this is one of the reasons I dont like apple.

Before I bought my Galaxy s1, I was actually planning on buying an iphone4. Why didn't I buy it? Because I couldnt. In sweden (and many other countries) at the time, there was no way to buy a iPhone without binding yourself to a carrier, and for a person like me that was going back and forth to china, thus having 1 chinese sim and 1 swedish sim, the ability to not being able to switch sim card whenever I wanted made me lose faith in the whole apple concept, because it's stupid beyond reason. There are simply too many weird "requirements" and requisites when you buy an apple product, and I think that more and more people are learning this now, and thats why apple is losing more and more customers to android

Are you always this negative :p?

In the UK we've been able to swap sim cards in and out of iphones, and buy them outside contracts for years.

Both Android and Apple are doing very well, and believe it or not, people are looking forward to both companies' products.

I think the big reason Android is doing well is because they're cheaper. That some geeks like to tinker with them is neither here nor there. On the whole, my impression is not that Android is gaining market share from iphone users, but rather they are gaining market share from people who want a good smart phone but are not willing to pay the huge price Apple is asking for. People upgrading from old Nokias, Sony Erricsons etc. The iphone is still the more sought after however.

Neither is going away.

hehe, since everything is relative, I guess me being negative (or positive) depends on your perspective ^^
I know that UK was one of the countries were you could buy an "carrier free" iphone, but thats for UK citizens only. Apple for some reason have different rules and regulations for selling iphone depending on what country you are living in, which is just one more reason I don't like apple.
As to iphone being cheaper than android phones, I would say that I only partially agree. There are cheaper budget smartphones using android, sure, but if you buy the iphone killers like galaxy or nexus, the price is pretty much the same.
And I wouldn't say that having the freedom of chosing to use whatever application you want is the same as being a geek tinkering with his phone ^^

@nick - is there any ideas as to when the iOS app will be ready? Are we looking at this year or is it still quite a long ways off?

Sorry to bug you on it but just wondering.

Thanks

FYI DaXia, if you want to buy an unlocked iPhone and you are going back and forth to China, pick one up in Hong Kong. They sell them unlocked there.

The Android vs. iPhone debate is a contentious one. In your original post, you're wondering for the purposes of using Skritter, what is a better one to buy? I think that a total of 2 programmers work at Skritter, Nick and Scott (please chime in and let me know if I'm wrong on this one!).

Nick is working on the iPhone and the site, Scott is working on the site. Scott joked that he had started working on an Android app - his progress so far is he bought a book on Android programming and flipped through it. The point being that this is a tiny operation, and if an Android app is done (which I think it eventually will), it will be a long time from now. By which point you'll have probably gone through two or three more phones. So if you want to use a customized app for Skritter, I think you should buy an iPhone. It's being worked on right now. If you don't mind using the website on a phone, buy an Android.

As for the debate about which is phone platform is more successful in the marketplace... I don't own a smartphone. I use a Windows computer. The only Apple thing I own is an iPod. And from everything that I've read, the iPhone is the number one phone out there. You are measuring by market share; there are numerous problems with this. Until just recently, the iPhone was only available on 1 network in the USA. As far as world market share, the iPhone is still only available on a few networks in international markets; for example, in China it is only available on China Telecom (I think it's CT). They are currently in negotiations to release it with China Mobile, a huge network.

The site you quoted predicting Android's increasing marketshare were from 2010. In 2011, data showed that Android's market share had peaked and then declined, which some attribute to the iPhone's availability on Verizon. http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06/21/needham-androids-market-share-peaked-in-march/

In fact, with all of it's limitations (iPhone is only available on certain networks. Apple has only been in the phone business for 4 years)... it is the number one cell phone vendor in the world, having just passed Nokia and Samsung. Furthermore, for each cell phone it sells it earns much more profit than any other vendor. Of all the profits being earned by mobile companies on the phones they sell, one company (Apple) earns 66% of them.

Yes, people who like to customize their phones and computers don't like Apple. It has a closed system. These are drawbacks. I personally wish Apple would not make some of the decisions it does (such as requiring a 30% cut of subscription fees from periodicals).

But this has not stopped Apple from being the most coveted phone, numbers wise. Yes, the websites you quoted predict that based on current trends, Android will quickly overtake Apple. But this is a prediction, and does not take into account that Apple is currently working to make it's phones available on many more networks. If the iPhone were available on the same amount of networks that Android phones were, the market share would be completely different. For example, in US telecom Verizon and ATT stores, the iPhone is the top selling phone against all of the other available models (such as Android & Blackberries).

There are rumors that Apple will be releasing a cheaper iPhone to compete in markets in the developing world such as India and China. And software developers as a whole will continue to prefer iPhone development, because study after study has shown that iPhone users spend much more on apps. This is why Angry Birds was released as a free version on Android - because customers were not nearly as willing to pay. Even if Apple will have a smaller market share, it is much more valuable by far.

In fact, now that I think about it, your question could just as easily apply to the computers it manufactures. Would you advise a friend to not buy an Apple computer because it's computer market share has always hovered around 5%, and that the future belongs to Microsoft? I think that would be a little silly.

Sorry for the essay; I read a lot of tech news, so it's something I'm interested in. While I don't like Apple's design philosophy, that hasn't stopped it from being the trendsetter for the entire industry and their product the #1 in the marketplace.

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/07/29/apple-passes-nokia-and-holds-off-samsung-to-become-worlds-top-smartphone-vendor/

http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/03/iphone-android-profit/

http://allthingsd.com/20110622/whats-the-top-selling-phone-at-verizon-and-att/

atdlouis
Maybe the best thing would be to get filthy rich and buy both phones^^

Anyways, I took a look on the links you provided, and iphone is still the most popular phone, but samsung is coming strong. Look at that growth! 520%! And this is just the beginning. If you look at the numbers, apple's market share is slowly but surely decreasing, where as samsung's is omgftw growing.
iPhone took the world with storm because there wasn't really any competition when the first iphones were released. Almost all smartphones looked like shit, but apple managed to combine both beauty and brains in one package with iphone. But now however, there are both better and cheaper phones out there that beats iphone in every way. So, unless you are a true mac fan, there isn't really any reason to buy an iPhone anymore.
And unless iphone 5 isn't freakin' super-innovative and has imba-power, I don't really see how it will be able to hold it's ground with this competition.

Dunno if anyone cares but I went out and bought an Android yesterday. :) So far it works beautifully. Skritter works just fine on it, as does ChinesePod, Anki and my other learning programs...

It working perfectly for you? Oh I can assure you us developers care! It's music to our ears.

We still have some things to fix on Android though. Nick and George will be doubling down on its issues next week.

It works just fine for me. It isn't overly slow... the only issue I do have is that the flash screen doesn't QUITE fit on my phone screen and when I zoom out I can't input any longer but it's only marginally out so it's not a huge deal. I doubt it's possible but is there anyway to make the flash box automatically fit the screen of whichever phone one is using? Or is there already a way to do this and I just haven't figured it out yet?

My word database is VERY small so this may be why I'm not having slow load times like others have complained about.

@nickybr38 I care too :) what model Android?

Maybe we are thinking in different time frames, sure Apple will probably go bankrupt again and then dominate a totally new market 10-20 years down the track.

But for our sake, consider that this time next year we will have iPhone skritter and new android phones will be fast enough for a good skritter experience. Should be fun times.

p.s. When I was in China I worked on the original iphone, nano, touch production lines, as well as samsung, motorola, lenovo, haier, and other chinese mobile phone brands. just braggin.

@nickybr38

You made a good choice going android instead of supporting that fruit company ^^

nickybr38, I'll be working on the layout issues on Tuesday. It's supposed to automatically fit the screen, but there are too many devices, so the device database we're using can't keep up.

Kai Carver -> Nexus S. :)

DaXia -> Told ya! I'm allergic to fruit. I didn't want to get a rash. ;)

nick -> Awesome. Thank you for all your hard work.

Has anyone tried skritter on a nook ?

How well does it work ?

Be interesting to see what the amazon tablet is like
and all the quad core phones/tablets coming out supposedly for christmas(if nvidia can meet one of its deadlines for once - real launch not paper)

Once I get time (in the middle of undergrad thesis - due nov) I'll have to see if I can get pandroid running on my pandaboard and if skritter will work on that.

Are we there yet ?
(ios version ?)