I am very sorry to hear that 
I’m genuinely curious: how many people have competent android tablets? Of the quality that offers parity with even basic iPads (Samsung, etc.)
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I don’t know how many people have android tablets, I have this
Galaxy Tab S9 | S9+ | S9 Ultra Tablet | Samsung US
and it easily is parity with an iPad.
To be clear, I’m not even going near a discussion about Apple vs. the rest of the world. I’m personally avoiding everything that has a relation to the apple, but that is my absolut personal opinion.
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Unfortunately, I have to reopen this topic.
I understand that developing an app for Android and building a new portfolio item requires effort.
A lot of development work goes into a professional app.
However, nowadays it is relatively easy to scale for a whole range of Android devices.
I personally know a lot of musicians/composers who work with a tablet and pen, which stops them from switching to Dorico or Dorico users switching to Sibelius. Sibelius led the way at the beginning of 2024. Steinberg is big enough to handle this investment. 71% Android user market share worldwide is promising for the ROI.
As a Steinberg fan, I continue to hope that the app for Android will come. Or I’ll have to familiarize myself with Sibelius
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Sibelius is a relatively lightweight application, given it was originally designed to run on single core machines with much lower clock speeds than we’re now used to, much less RAM etc.
Its development team took a quite different approach to Steinberg when refactoring Sibelius for mobile: it’s largely the same code base as the desktop version, but the user interface is exceptionally minimal. Even on iPad there is virtually nothing (except the onscreen keypad) to touch, just a search bar, which makes any kind of input incredibly frustrating if you’re used to the efficiency of the desktop version. It’s a bit better with a Bluetooth keyboard, I guess.
Dorico was initially built for multicore processors, plenty of RAM - computers from less than 10 years ago, rather than computers from 25 years ago.
When Steinberg ported Dorico to iPad, they essentially kept the same user interface as Dorico on desktop. It’s largely the same codebase, meaning it needs quite powerful hardware - even some recent iPad models aren’t really up to handling larger projects.
Were Steinberg to attempt a Dorico version for Android, they’d need to either completely reimagine all the back end processing stuff, or artificially limit the number of players/layouts/bars/flows, or they’d need to restrict its use to a small subset of Android devices that could actually handle it. It wouldn’t do them any favours to knock out a Chrome Book version of Dorico as it currently exists on iPads, because Chrome Books don’t have the processing capability or the RAM to run Dorico well.
It’s not about scaling for a variety of different devices; it’s doing it in a way that shows the program in the best light. Sibelius made a horrible compromise over UI, but the code can run on pretty well anything, and Dorico looks great on modern iPads but would likely run really badly on a great many Android devices.
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At least i would be happy to have some kind of Dorico Player where you can load your .dorico files and use the player mainly as as score sheet viewer and maybe to play some VSTs.
The VSTs are the probably the most difficult bit to handle in a sandboxed environment.
Even if Dorico got ported to Linux, you’d have to port the VSTs (e.g. Kontakt, HALion, SINE, etc, etc.) as well.
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Avid is a Fiat…
Dorico is a Mercedes…
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Anything for us android users?
Not sure why is that when the world is about 80% market share
It’s been clearly stated in the linked article, and in Daniel’s own reply here. Although the device market may be larger (actually about 70%), the market of people buying apps is much smaller. Plus technical obstacles.
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Just out of interest: where does this statistic that Android people buy fewer apps than Apple customers come from?
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A quick google (or other less -invasive search of your choice) bring up any amount of statistics:
On average, an iPhone user spends $12.77 per app. By comparison, the average Android user spends $6.19 on each app. For in-app purchases, the average transaction on iPhones is $1.07 , while the average transaction on Android is $0.43 .
iOS takes more app revenue overall, and it is heavily skewed to wealthier demographics.
I’m prepared to accept that Daniel has “done his research” (and also has access to the Cubasis sales data). If it’s too much work for too little gain, then …
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Apparently the sum of the arguments speaks against an Android version.
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I would say it’s a Rolls Royce:)
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It seems fair to surmise that if Cubasis is barely worth the effort (which undoubtedly has a larger user base / potential market than Dorico) then Dorico probably would not be.
Many app developers struggle to offer adequate android support because there are so many devices and they all have different specs, different forks of android, etc. etc. iOS is a much more tightly controlled environment, and by and large, the behavior you get on one iPad is what you will get on the next. This simply isn’t true for android.
And as for the spending habits of iOS vs android users, it’s not merely a case of wealth demographics. There is also a difference in culture between the two platforms.
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Absolutely true - and also true for Windows, if I may point this out here. In comparisons between macOS and Windows, it is often forgotten that Microsoft has to make it run on a vastly more diverse range of devices and they already have earned quite some hate over the last years for daring to require TPM2.0 for W11, making a lot of devices obsolete by upcoming October.
I don’t like the situation either, with the iPad being the virtually only tablet for certain use cases, but one has to give this much to Steve Jobs that he had this golden market intuition back when he presented the first generation.
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Well here it is guys:
iOS users (Apple) spend much more on apps than Android users.
As of the most recent global reports:
iOS users account for about 65–70% of total app store revenue, even though Android has a larger number of users worldwide.
In 2024, estimates showed that iOS App Store generated around $85 billion in revenue, while the Google Play Store generated around $48 billion.
On average, an iPhone user spends about 2 to 3 times more on apps (including in-app purchases) compared to an Android user.
Why?
iPhone users tend to be from regions with higher income (like North America, Western Europe, Japan).
Android is more common in emerging markets where users are less likely to pay for apps.
Quick Summary: | Platform | Global Market Share (users) | Global App Revenue Share | |:—|:—|:—| | Android | ~70-72% | ~30-35% | | iOS | ~28-30% | ~65-70% |
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Counterpoint: This number is totally irrelevant here. We are comparing apples (haha) with oranges, as most of the time these statistics reach across all people around the whole globe.
What would be relevant is how much those Android users would be willing to spend who are potential Dorico users. This excludes teenie girls on their first little Android phone as well as many people from poorer countries who could never afford a tablet (sorry for generalizing here) and everybody else who has nothing to do with music in the first place.
I don’t see why somebody who ownes Dorico and wants to use it on his tablet that happens to run on Android should be less willing to pay some money than somebody on his iPad.
Please don’t use statistics as a base for your argument if they are not based on the correct subset of people.
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