Google says 500,000 developers use Flutter monthly, outlines release process and versioning changes

Google today revealed that “nearly half a million developers” now use its open source UI framework Flutter each month. And 2 million developers have used Flutter since version 1.0 was released in December 2018. This is the first time the company has shared user milestones for the SDK. Adoption isn’t slowing down: Flutter saw 10% month-over-month growth in March. And out of the 50,000 Flutter apps on Google Play, nearly 10,000 were uploaded in the past month.

Meant to compete with frameworks like Facebook’s React Native, Flutter began its life as an open source mobile UI framework that helps developers build native interfaces for Android and iOS. Since May, however, Flutter has let developers build desktop, embedded, mobile, and web apps from the same codebase. Developers can use Flutter on phones, wearables, tablets, desktops, laptops, televisions, and smart displays. Google calls this ambient computing — the idea that your services and software are available wherever you need them. Google wants developers to start app development not by asking “Which device am I targeting?” but “What am I going to build?” Reusing code should help startups limited by resources and let enterprises consolidate teams into shipping a single experience.