After a three week skid, Apple finally showed positive growth in the iOS-Android wars among our health care providers! This week, Apple took back .02 percent of the mobile device pie from Android.


Señor Goat reports updates from the front lines of the iOS-Android wars. Each Friday, we report the current device breakdown of our charge capture physician users and identify the net winner for the week. Check back next Friday for your dose of our little medical corner of the platform wars.

FINAL

iOS: 90.71%
Android: 9.29%

The most popular mobile operating system in the world has been steadily creeping into the health care scene in America. This week, Android took away another 0.06 percent of the mobile device pie among our health care providers.


Señor Goat reports updates from the front lines of the iOS-Android wars. Each Friday, we report the current device breakdown of our charge capture physician users and identify the net winner for the week. Check back next Friday for your dose of our little medical corner of the platform wars.

FINAL

iOS: 90.69%
Android: 9.31%

Android took away .07 percent of net mobile devices from Apple this week. The three most recent Android versions are Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean, and KitKat. It looks like our doctors are developing a sweet tooth!


Señor Goat reports updates from the front lines of the iOS-Android wars. Each Friday, we report the current device breakdown of our charge capture physician users and identify the net winner for the week. Check back next Friday for your dose of our little medical corner of the platform wars.

FINAL

iOS: 90.75%
Android: 9.25%

Due to popular demand, Señor Goat will be reporting updates from the front lines of the iOS-Android wars. Each Friday, we will be reporting the current device breakdown of our charge capture physician users and identifying the net winner for the week. Check back every Friday for your dose of our little medical corner of the platform wars.

Android takes two steps forward, one step back. After a strong 2 weeks in a row gaining on Apple, Android lost .18 percent of the mobile device pie this week.

FINAL

iOS: 90.82%
Android: 9.18%

Due to popular demand, Señor Goat will be reporting updates from the front lines of the iOS-Android wars. Each Friday, we will be reporting the current device breakdown of our charge capture physician users and identifying the net winner for the week. Check back every Friday for your dose of our little medical corner of the platform wars.

For the second week in a row Android has topped Apple in net devices for the week, taking away an additional 0.17 percent of the mobile user base. Perhaps there's a correlation between Android's growth and the excitement around Google's new project that was unveiled this week.

FINAL

iOS: 90.64%
Android: 9.36%

Due to popular demand, Señor Goat will be reporting updates from the front lines of the iOS-Android wars. Each Friday, we will be reporting the current device breakdown of our users and identifying the net winner for the week. Check back every Friday for your dose of our little medical corner of the platform wars.

Android crushed Apple with a 0.15 percent surge in total devices this week. Are doctors abandoning their iPhones for one of Google's progenies?

FINAL

iOS: 90.81%
Android: 9.19%

As of last week, we released version 8 of pMD’s iOS charge capture application, which fully supports secure text messaging between providers and staff in and between practices. One of the inherent challenges in mobile development is trying to keep your user base up to date with the newest version of your app. Not only does this ensure that users get the latest features and performance improvements, it also helps keep the organization agile by not having to support and maintain backward compatibility with legacy versions. With fewer strings attached to the past, a small team of developers can deliver above their weight class.

Like many companies that support native applications on mobile devices, we always struggled with getting enough of our users to upgrade to the latest version in a timely manner. Last year, Apple helped alleviate this problem by introducing auto-update to applications. In the first few days after the update, there was an inevitable spike in upgrades, followed by a linear-like rate. A little more than a week after its release, over 58 percent of our user base is now updated to the latest version of the app, which is a much faster adoption rate than we had for previous versions.


There are several reasons, however, why this number isn’t higher: some users have auto-update turned off, haven’t used pMD since the app updated, are prevented from updating the app due to not yet having iOS 7+, or are simply afraid of change. So even though the problem of legacy app support is improving, it is by no means solved. There really won’t be a silver bullet other than customer education and building updates that persuade the most skeptical hold outs that an update is worth while.

Apple will be releasing its earnings report later today, and we at pMD were wondering if we could predict or corroborate the existing market expectation: Apple went sideways in Q2. I wrote earlier that in the mobile wars, Android is gaining on iOS, but that in our niche (charge capture and secure messaging for medical professionals), Apple is still dominant. The question is, has anything changed in the pMD device breakdown between the last earnings call and today?

Before revealing the numbers, it’s important to note that our company inevitably and officially ended support for BlackBerry on March 31, so there was a forced migration of 1.22 percent of our users to Android and iOS devices. How does this affect the trends? We're not sure, but it's not going to stop us from making wild predictions, kind of.


Looking at the charts, Android gained 0.8 percent and iOS gained 0.45 percent market share among doctors, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants using pMD. This supports the lackluster market expectations, and if anything else, hints at even lower expectations for the Q2 results. With that said, eyes (medical and otherwise) are already set on rumors and hopes of Apple announcements in June.

In my last post, I painted a picture of a war between Apple and Google for the brains of our mobile devices. Some inquisitive readers, however, wondered why I didn't mention anything about another well-known contender, BlackBerry. (No one asked about Windows.) The answer shouldn't be surprising for anyone following the news. As of last month, BlackBerry had just 0.6 percent of the market (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/12/blackberrys-market-share-falls-below-others/). Similarly, for the pMD charge capture app, BlackBerry accounts for only 0.7 percent of mobile users.

Looking at the last few years of pMD users, the trend is clear.

Of our current users who had BlackBerry devices, more than 92 percent switched to iOS devices, and the rest switched to Android.

The reasons why BlackBerry fell from its once-envied position will be the subject of case studies for business students for years to come. Yet it's easy to forget that we stand on the shoulders of BlackBerry. When I joined pMD as a software engineer in 2009, BlackBerry accounted for more than half of our user base. I heard firsthand from doctors and nurses how much they loved their devices, from the efficiency of their physical keyboards to their robust messaging--BlackBerry was cool. It’s easy to forget that BlackBerry was called “Crackberry,” a nickname no modern device has inherited.

Even though the fate of RIM and BlackBerry serves as a cautionary tale that nothing in technology is sacred, it is also a chance to reflect on what they made possible. In particular, here at pMD, we can reflect on how they helped make mobile charge capture and in fact mobile medicine a reality.