5 ms·

Does Flutter have enough marketshare, to make this the next best investment of time and energy?

by ozten 3y ago

wiradikusuma 3y ago
I'm literally writing a book (https://opinionatedlaunch.com/ https://opinionatedlaunch.com/) that heavily promotes Flutter, so I'm biased :) If your use case is "typical" like 90% of the apps out there, I think there's no reason to invest in native anymore (I did native Android a while back, so I can't comment if you're coming from iOS). Flutter has very strong developer productivity (such as "press Cmd+\ to auto-reload"), wide array of plugins (now with official Firebase plugins). Heck, somebody wrote a "Visual Basic" for Flutter (https://flutterflow.io/ https://flutterflow.io/) using Flutter.
- altfredd 3y ago
  Flutter is nice, but "typical 90% apps" can be written with literally anything. The real problem with Flutter is it's tendency to attract bottom-of-the-barrel cheapskate customers. I don't want to double down on my earlier mistakes and box myself into lower-paid 10% of already lower-paid (compared to iOS) Android development market.
  - plumeria 3y ago
    What do you think of React Native in this regard?
  - anta40 3y ago
    >> ...but "typical 90% apps" can be written with literally anything. OK let's put a constraint: multiplatform. Take Flutter out of the equation, then what do we have: RN, Ionic, Kotlin Multiplatform... what else? - RN, Ionic: errr I'm still having nightmares reading JS/TS code - Kotlin Multiplatform: not stable yet?
    - snovv_crash 3y ago
      Qt and MAUI come to mind. Qt can even be deployed to embedded systems if that's your jam.
- tazjin 3y ago
  I think it's absurd to say that "developers can press Cmd+\, which is so good that we will accept a ~15% worse UX". The industry has very strongly decided that developer "productivity" is more important than anything else though. It's sad.
  - moonchrome 3y ago
    That's an extreme oversimplification. Most apps are budget constrained - doing 2x native over flutter budget doesn't get you 15% better UX. It probably doesn't even give you two working apps in the budget. And getting to them you're still likely 2x bugs and worse UX because of the time spent redeveloping common shit. If you're not budget constrained, have a team that can execute better UX without flutter, and this matters to your app - go for native. But there's so many scenarios where it doesn't.
    - jwells89 3y ago
      It depends on the app, but the costs for maintaining iOS and Android separately don’t seem like 2x… with how similar Swift and Kotlin are to each other and Compose greatly streamlining what used to be a real mess (Android Framework), it’s closer to maybe 1.2x or 1.35x. More expensive but not terribly prohibitive, plus it saves some trouble in the future when/if features that don’t play nice with whatever cross platform framework are needed at some point down the road. Dual native also gets you better portability to new platforms branching off of iOS and Android — for example most native iOS apps can be turned into suitable AR apps for visionOS with two clicks and it does most of the UI adaptations required for you. Flutter won’t be able to do that for years if ever.
  - realusername 3y ago
    I don't think native necessarily bring you better UX, or even better speed for that regard. On my very low end Android device, Flutter apps are more responsive than the native ones.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > The industry has very strongly decided that developer "productivity" is more important than anything else though. It's not productivity, it's cost. If an app costs twice as much to build for "20% better UX" then that's ridiculous. You can release earlier and spend half the difference on bugfixes/polish/additional features based on what you see in the wild.
Larrikin 3y ago
There's a lot of effort to make kotlin cross platform
- esafak 3y ago
  It just needs more multiplatform libraries.
WhereIsTheTruth 3y ago
Look at the number of projects that offer a Flutter sdk, that'll give you an idea how popular it is https://github.com/search?q=flutter%20sdk&type=repositories https://github.com/search?q=flutter%20sdk&type=repositories
synergy20 3y ago
after trying flutter I ended up with react native for mobile, wxwidgets for desktops, both solid and I don't need learn yet another language dart, I actually like dart but there are only so many languages I can focus
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
  I think the very common recommendation is that if you know JS well, use react. If you know C++/#/Java, then you’ll get Dart quickly.
  - synergy20 3y ago
    if your app needs to do cloud, cloud sdk for dart is very uncommon
    - SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
      What are you talking about? GCP support in Flutter is excellent. You know… because Google…
      - synergy20 3y ago
        what about aws and azure? I was looking for them but it's a while ago, not sure if both added dart SDK yet nowadays.
- baq 3y ago
  Languages are tools, after you learn a couple or so they’re all mostly the same and it’s the quirks that differentiate them. (Yes C and Coq are quite different, just don’t) Now if you’re talking about ecosystems, package managers, CI/CD…
  - synergy20 3y ago
    it's the whole package of course,the language,tools,libraries,etc
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
la_fayette 3y ago
There are app market analytics tools, which among other things, also check how many apps use cross-platform technology. Flutter is among the most widely used: https://appfigures.com/top-sdks/development/apps https://appfigures.com/top-sdks/development/apps
- guideamigo 3y ago
  This stat is not relevant. A more relevant stat would be to filter out apps with a threshold of downloads. I would be curious to know how many apps with a 1M+ downloads use these frameworks.
  - kugelblitz 3y ago
    Popular apps used to be non-popular apps. So you would want to reach people early. I can imagine many big / popular apps switch to native once they have the resources to do so but start off with cross-platform.
    - JimDabell 3y ago
      > I can imagine many big / popular apps switch to native once they have the resources to do so but start off with cross-platform. Not really. Startups looking to keep costs as low as possible tell themselves this and there’s a lot of advice out there from people who will tell you the same, but it’s very rare. If you are tempted to go with the cheap option and plan on switching once you have the budget, make your peace with the fact you will probably be stuck with the cheap option forever.
  - thijser 3y ago
    AppBrain shows market share stats for all apps and also for the top ranked apps: https://www.appbrain.com/stats/libraries/details/flutter/flutter https://www.appbrain.com/stats/libraries/details/flutter/flu... 6% of the top ranked apps use Flutter.
    - guideamigo 3y ago
itake 3y ago
At my day job, our app has both native and flutter runtimes and it has not been super fun managing the two. 1. Common libraries (api clients) need to be built for all 3-runtimes (swift, kotlin, and dart). 2. Flutter runtimes increases the app size (539kb vs 4,700kb [0]), which is a problem for apps that are already too big. [0] - https://medium.com/android-news/comparing-apk-sizes-a0eb37bb36f https://medium.com/android-news/comparing-apk-sizes-a0eb37bb...
- pzo 3y ago
  Not sure how it's on android market but on iOS app store its pretty rare to have app update (yep just update) that is less than 100MB even though all those apps were native - I know it's pretty crazy but this is were we live.
  - itake 3y ago
    My day job operates in a market where users have low-end and past generation phones. The users literally don't have the space to install apps, so they don't.
tbarbugli 3y ago
we (getstream.io) built an official SDK for Flutter and it was definetely ROI positive

Does Flutter have enough marketshare, to make this the next best investment of time and energy?

by ozten 3y ago

Does Flutter have enough marketshare, to make this the next best investment of time and energy?

I'm literally writing a book (https://opinionatedlaunch.com/ https://opinionatedlaunch.com/) that heavily promotes Flutter, so I'm biased :) If your use case is "typical" like 90% of the apps out there, I think there's no reason to invest in native anymore (I did native Android a while back, so I can't comment if you're coming from iOS). Flutter has very strong developer productivity (such as "press Cmd+\ to auto-reload"), wide array of plugins (now with official Firebase plugins). Heck, somebody wrote a "Visual Basic" for Flutter (https://flutterflow.io/ https://flutterflow.io/) using Flutter.

altfredd 3y ago
Flutter is nice, but "typical 90% apps" can be written with literally anything. The real problem with Flutter is it's tendency to attract bottom-of-the-barrel cheapskate customers. I don't want to double down on my earlier mistakes and box myself into lower-paid 10% of already lower-paid (compared to iOS) Android development market.
- plumeria 3y ago
  What do you think of React Native in this regard?
- anta40 3y ago
  >> ...but "typical 90% apps" can be written with literally anything. OK let's put a constraint: multiplatform. Take Flutter out of the equation, then what do we have: RN, Ionic, Kotlin Multiplatform... what else? - RN, Ionic: errr I'm still having nightmares reading JS/TS code - Kotlin Multiplatform: not stable yet?
  - snovv_crash 3y ago
    Qt and MAUI come to mind. Qt can even be deployed to embedded systems if that's your jam.
tazjin 3y ago
I think it's absurd to say that "developers can press Cmd+\, which is so good that we will accept a ~15% worse UX". The industry has very strongly decided that developer "productivity" is more important than anything else though. It's sad.
- moonchrome 3y ago
  That's an extreme oversimplification. Most apps are budget constrained - doing 2x native over flutter budget doesn't get you 15% better UX. It probably doesn't even give you two working apps in the budget. And getting to them you're still likely 2x bugs and worse UX because of the time spent redeveloping common shit. If you're not budget constrained, have a team that can execute better UX without flutter, and this matters to your app - go for native. But there's so many scenarios where it doesn't.
  - jwells89 3y ago
    It depends on the app, but the costs for maintaining iOS and Android separately don’t seem like 2x… with how similar Swift and Kotlin are to each other and Compose greatly streamlining what used to be a real mess (Android Framework), it’s closer to maybe 1.2x or 1.35x. More expensive but not terribly prohibitive, plus it saves some trouble in the future when/if features that don’t play nice with whatever cross platform framework are needed at some point down the road. Dual native also gets you better portability to new platforms branching off of iOS and Android — for example most native iOS apps can be turned into suitable AR apps for visionOS with two clicks and it does most of the UI adaptations required for you. Flutter won’t be able to do that for years if ever.
- realusername 3y ago
  I don't think native necessarily bring you better UX, or even better speed for that regard. On my very low end Android device, Flutter apps are more responsive than the native ones.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > The industry has very strongly decided that developer "productivity" is more important than anything else though. It's not productivity, it's cost. If an app costs twice as much to build for "20% better UX" then that's ridiculous. You can release earlier and spend half the difference on bugfixes/polish/additional features based on what you see in the wild.

Larrikin 3y ago

There's a lot of effort to make kotlin cross platform

esafak 3y ago
It just needs more multiplatform libraries.

WhereIsTheTruth 3y ago

Look at the number of projects that offer a Flutter sdk, that'll give you an idea how popular it is https://github.com/search?q=flutter%20sdk&type=repositories https://github.com/search?q=flutter%20sdk&type=repositories

synergy20 3y ago

after trying flutter I ended up with react native for mobile, wxwidgets for desktops, both solid and I don't need learn yet another language dart, I actually like dart but there are only so many languages I can focus

SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
I think the very common recommendation is that if you know JS well, use react. If you know C++/#/Java, then you’ll get Dart quickly.
- synergy20 3y ago
  if your app needs to do cloud, cloud sdk for dart is very uncommon
  - SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
    What are you talking about? GCP support in Flutter is excellent. You know… because Google…
    - synergy20 3y ago
      what about aws and azure? I was looking for them but it's a while ago, not sure if both added dart SDK yet nowadays.
baq 3y ago
Languages are tools, after you learn a couple or so they’re all mostly the same and it’s the quirks that differentiate them. (Yes C and Coq are quite different, just don’t) Now if you’re talking about ecosystems, package managers, CI/CD…
- synergy20 3y ago
  it's the whole package of course,the language,tools,libraries,etc

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

la_fayette 3y ago

There are app market analytics tools, which among other things, also check how many apps use cross-platform technology. Flutter is among the most widely used: https://appfigures.com/top-sdks/development/apps https://appfigures.com/top-sdks/development/apps

guideamigo 3y ago
This stat is not relevant. A more relevant stat would be to filter out apps with a threshold of downloads. I would be curious to know how many apps with a 1M+ downloads use these frameworks.
- kugelblitz 3y ago
  Popular apps used to be non-popular apps. So you would want to reach people early. I can imagine many big / popular apps switch to native once they have the resources to do so but start off with cross-platform.
  - JimDabell 3y ago
    > I can imagine many big / popular apps switch to native once they have the resources to do so but start off with cross-platform. Not really. Startups looking to keep costs as low as possible tell themselves this and there’s a lot of advice out there from people who will tell you the same, but it’s very rare. If you are tempted to go with the cheap option and plan on switching once you have the budget, make your peace with the fact you will probably be stuck with the cheap option forever.
- thijser 3y ago
  AppBrain shows market share stats for all apps and also for the top ranked apps: https://www.appbrain.com/stats/libraries/details/flutter/flutter https://www.appbrain.com/stats/libraries/details/flutter/flu... 6% of the top ranked apps use Flutter.
  - guideamigo 3y ago

itake 3y ago

At my day job, our app has both native and flutter runtimes and it has not been super fun managing the two. 1. Common libraries (api clients) need to be built for all 3-runtimes (swift, kotlin, and dart). 2. Flutter runtimes increases the app size (539kb vs 4,700kb [0]), which is a problem for apps that are already too big. [0] - https://medium.com/android-news/comparing-apk-sizes-a0eb37bb36f https://medium.com/android-news/comparing-apk-sizes-a0eb37bb...

pzo 3y ago
Not sure how it's on android market but on iOS app store its pretty rare to have app update (yep just update) that is less than 100MB even though all those apps were native - I know it's pretty crazy but this is were we live.
- itake 3y ago
  My day job operates in a market where users have low-end and past generation phones. The users literally don't have the space to install apps, so they don't.

tbarbugli 3y ago

we (getstream.io) built an official SDK for Flutter and it was definetely ROI positive