Will the Droid Motivate Developers to Produce More Medical Apps?

by Iltifat Husain
on Dec 06, 2009

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Lately when I turn on the TV I feel I’m being bombarded with commercials for the Droid and being told how superior it is to the iPhone.  At first I thought these suggestions were completely outlandish and this was another phone trying to “imitate” the iPhone’s “mystique”.  However, I got the chance to play around with one the other weekend and I must say, Apple should feel scared.  I feel in love with the beautiful display, snappy processor speed, and the legitimate 3G connection.

There is no disputing Verizon is the majority when it comes to cell phone users, which makes the proliferation of the App Store even more astounding.  Verizon has approximately 89 million subscribers while AT&T has 81 million (Wikipedia).  What’s notable is how Verizon customers haven’t really had a smartphone they could get excited about until the recently released Droid.

There is a nice article in computerworld titled “7 Smartphone Predictions for 2010”.  One of the predictions they list is AT&T losing their exclusive relationship with the iPhone.  Its interesting how they start off the article though….

One such user, John Davis, has been a physician for many years. He owns a new Droid smartphone, purchased at a Verizon Wireless store near Boston in November.

Davis cites many reasons for buying a Droid, the main one being that it is the closest thing to Apple Inc.’s fantastically successful iPhone that runs on the Verizon network. Having been a Verizon customer for years, Davis said he trusts the Verizon network more than he does the one offered by AT&T, the wireless carrier with exclusive rights to the iPhone in the U.S.

Aside from some initial voice echo problems, Davis sees the Droid as being handy for personal use and in his medical practice, where he can use it to browse for new research and exchange e-mail with colleagues. The Droid’s GPS capability is another plus.

But in the end, this is how Davis summarizes what could be the smartphone’s biggest impact in the world of computing and communications: “Eventually, this thing is my computer.”

The main form of motivation for developers to make medical apps for the Droid will be increased sales of the Droid, and it appears that’s happening based on numbers presented in the article by analysts.  There are obvious shortcomings to the Droid’s native OS, the Android system.  We mentioned these in a previous article.  However, the Droid offers a product on part with the iPhone, and if enough excitement is generated by it, I have a feeling we’ll see a growing number of Medical apps for the Android Platform.

With Verizon’s Droid expected to hit 1 million in sales in its first quarter of availability, according to some researchers, a few of the dozens of other new Android devices could also sell well.

The Android operating system is expected to ship globally on 3.7 million smartphones in 2009, but that figure could more than double to 8.2 million in 2010 and Android could start to dominate the smartphone operating system market by 2014, Frost & Sullivan estimates.

By 2014, the Android could be the third most popular operating system, shipping on 65 million phones. That would put it behind first-place Symbian OS, which is used on Nokia devices and is projected to ship on 233 million phones that year, and Research in Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry operating system, which will be on 92 million phones, according to Frost & Sullivan.

I’ve been told by developers they don’t like developing for Android because of the different versions of the OS and the lack of standardization.  However, if the Droid keeps pulling in big numbers, in particular medical users such as the above mentioned, than these limitations will be worth dealing with.

The beautiful screen and lightening quick processor on the Droid make it very suitable for mobile medical applications.  The screen is larger than the iPhones and with so many iPhone medical apps utilizing robust graphical interfaces one would think the progression to the Droid would be seamless and offer a better experience.

At the end of the day though it comes down to simple supply and demand based on the numbers presented in the above quote: Millions of Droids being sold = Millions more potential customers for mobile medical applications = A new wave of medical applications on the way.

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Comments:

  • StatCoder.com
    The Droid has a long way to go before it will come close to rivaling the iPhone. The Droid may sell one million devices in its first quarter. There have been over 50 million iPhone OS devices sold over the past three years.

    Perhaps market projections may suffice if you are thinking of investing $200 in a phone and signing a two year contract. A hobbyist or part-time developer, however, may be looking at investing the better part of a year to get up to speed on developing for a new platform (not to mention having to buy the hardware). More important is the opportunity cost of spending less time and becoming less competitive in the platform where all of the current users are.

    I see clinicians walking around with iPhones multiple times per day. I have yet to lay eyes on a Droid. As long as I can reach 20 or more iPhone OS users for every Droid user, free app or not, it's a no-brainer. This positive feedback loop of developers following users following the software that developers create is exactly why Palm OS PDAs took off among clinicians and didn't let up until Palm dropped the ball with smartphones.
  • iltifat
    Will-

    You mentioned some great points in your comments. Do you think if the popularity of the Droid continues at its current pace, and if studies show it comes close to rivaling the iPhone, would you consider developing for the platform?
  • StatCoder.com
    Medical apps that are databases that can be easily adapted to be viewed by different platforms such as drug references and other clinical references will probably be available for Android soon. However, apps that do clinical calculations or algorithms usually need to be developed as native applications for specific platforms.

    Much of this is niche software that is developed and launched by one person, often a hobbyist developer who is a full-time clinician. It's simply not realistic to think that a part-time developer is going to develop software for a device that they do not currently own or use. As long as you see ten to twenty times more clinicians using iPhones or iPod Touches than any other platform, you will see that same distribution in the clinical software selection.

    Mainstream developers may move away from iPhone OS development to avoid intense competition in the App Store for general apps, however, clinical app developers don't usually have that concern. If I'm developing an app to do something that doesn't currently exist on a mobile device then I'm going to look at whatever is the dominant platform.
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