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It feels to me like there is a market opportunity for a new keyboard app manufacturer here. Possibly along similar ethical lines as Mozilla/Firefox (there's bun

It feels to me like there is a market opportunity for a new keyboard app manufacturer here. Possibly along similar ethical lines as Mozilla/Firefox (there's bundled stuff because someone has to pay the bills, but it's only so much effort to turn it off).

viraptor 4y ago
I'm really surprised there are no quality swipe keyboard options out there. Gboard is ok. I liked SwiftKey better a few years ago, but it degraded. But I'd pay for a swipe keyboard which solves a few issues I run into all the time: like not being great at detecting the space swipe, not showing the word alternatives consistently, not getting stuck in password entry mode, etc. I tried a few of the available options and it seems like gboard and SwiftKey on top, then a huge chasm, then every other option, few of them likely low quality data stealers. Please, do it well and take my money!
rishav_sharan 4y ago
Pretty much no revenue opportunities. I was the PM for a keyboard app with millions of downloads and was the most downloaded keyboard app in India. But there is no way to monetize it. Early on, the OEMs would pay us to have our keyboards in their images as it would give them more customizability, better local language support and end-to-end localization. The rev share on each device sold, was enough to keep the product funded. But post 2014, the OEMs started asking for fees to add our keyboard into their images. And instead of positive funds, we started to go into negative and had to pivot away from being just a keyboard. Anyway, right now there is not much market opportunity in this space. Maybe with AI being ubiquitous, a new wave of keyboard apps will come in - but again right now the economics don't make sense.
- criddell 4y ago
  > no way to monetize it I don’t understand this. Where you giving it away?
  - rishav_sharan 4y ago
    Our keyboard was free to the end users and we made our money from OEMs giving us a few cents for each device that came with our keyboard as a default app. We also had a pro version, but as our app was focused on the Indian market, and the Indian users were not big on paid apps back in early 2010s, there's wasn't much revenue in that either.
- red_admiral 4y ago
  I'm afraid I must agree with your experience on the revenue opportunities angle. I wish we were in a world where several good keyboards on mobile, like shells/terminals on desktop, existed just for the sake of making the world a better place and none of them needed integrating with Ads/Search Engines/AI etc. for the sake of generating revenue. Even better, I wish we lived in a world where the programmers of such tools were well paid for their services, whether through philanthropy or government grants or something else.

viraptor 4y ago

I'm really surprised there are no quality swipe keyboard options out there. Gboard is ok. I liked SwiftKey better a few years ago, but it degraded. But I'd pay for a swipe keyboard which solves a few issues I run into all the time: like not being great at detecting the space swipe, not showing the word alternatives consistently, not getting stuck in password entry mode, etc. I tried a few of the available options and it seems like gboard and SwiftKey on top, then a huge chasm, then every other option, few of them likely low quality data stealers. Please, do it well and take my money!

rishav_sharan 4y ago

Pretty much no revenue opportunities. I was the PM for a keyboard app with millions of downloads and was the most downloaded keyboard app in India. But there is no way to monetize it. Early on, the OEMs would pay us to have our keyboards in their images as it would give them more customizability, better local language support and end-to-end localization. The rev share on each device sold, was enough to keep the product funded. But post 2014, the OEMs started asking for fees to add our keyboard into their images. And instead of positive funds, we started to go into negative and had to pivot away from being just a keyboard. Anyway, right now there is not much market opportunity in this space. Maybe with AI being ubiquitous, a new wave of keyboard apps will come in - but again right now the economics don't make sense.

criddell 4y ago
> no way to monetize it I don’t understand this. Where you giving it away?
- rishav_sharan 4y ago
  Our keyboard was free to the end users and we made our money from OEMs giving us a few cents for each device that came with our keyboard as a default app. We also had a pro version, but as our app was focused on the Indian market, and the Indian users were not big on paid apps back in early 2010s, there's wasn't much revenue in that either.
red_admiral 4y ago
I'm afraid I must agree with your experience on the revenue opportunities angle. I wish we were in a world where several good keyboards on mobile, like shells/terminals on desktop, existed just for the sake of making the world a better place and none of them needed integrating with Ads/Search Engines/AI etc. for the sake of generating revenue. Even better, I wish we lived in a world where the programmers of such tools were well paid for their services, whether through philanthropy or government grants or something else.