Shattered Glass: Why Android Fragmentation Is Good

That’s at least one company’s wager at what number of unique Android devices are in use nowadays. If proper, that may be a surprising range of character gadgets. And simply, that might corroborate the belief that Android is “fragmented.” Broken into thousands and thousands of small pieces like shards of glass.

Or something like that.

The makers of OpenSignalMaps released this week’s survey, and it encompasses six months of download facts from their famous Google Play Store app. Overall there had been 681,900 entries into the survey. In all fairness, the survey makers do not seem to take a stance in this being poor or effective, but there are some symptoms they consider as previous.

Without question, the most important narrative the press derived from this survey becomes that Android is a totally fragmented atmosphere and that fragmentation hurts clients and app developers. Furthermore, that fragmentation is simply every other reason to purchase an iPhone.

Is Android fragmented? Of course, that isn’t the most effective outcome of presenting a unfastened mobile running machine; it is the favored effect of presenting a free cell working gadget. Is this a negative outcome? Yes and no.

For starters, permit’s stop pretending the survey from OpenSignalMaps is clinical. It isn’t always. It became not a random pattern; it became a comfort sample of those who downloaded an app. Furthermore, the nearly 4,000 device range I quoted earlier was exceedingly muddled with custom ROMs and devices which can be light-years out of doors of the mainstream.

The records additionally cautioned more of a protracted-tail of fragmentation than a considerable use of a large number of gadgets. The survey discovered Samsung commanded 40% of the Android marketplace, mixed with Motorola, HTC, and Sony, it became greater than 60%. There are three or 4 large manufacturers that dominate the market in other phrases, after which a massive variety of insignificant manufactures.

Now that we realize the caveats of the examination, it’s miles clear that this is not a fantastic representation of the Android network. It truely suggests several manufacturers and several configurations, but that become validated before this changed into launch.

OpenSignalMaps additionally offers information concerning the version of Android these devices had been running, and once more, there are few surprises.

The brunt of the gadgets (55%) was strolling Gingerbread (2.Three), 20.5% have been strolling Froyo (2.2), and the best 4-tenths of a percentage were jogging the state-of-the-art Android Ice Cream Sandwich. Other, greater dependable statistics suggest that the Android four.0 person base is extra like 2-3% of the community, making the greater experience. Either way, these statistics honestly display what I agree with is an essential poor fragmentation of the marketplace.

I do now not accept as true the hardware fragmentation is either sizeable, significant, or poor. In fact, I believe it’s miles the opposite; it’s far high quality. The choice is vital in a consumer market; greater desire method better products. And at the same time, as it took a while for Android hardware to suit the iPhone, I suppose it has surpassed it in many ways. Apple is not leading the market with new and modern functions; Android is taking the lead.

Take display length as an example. Steve Jobs outspokenly lamented big displays on telephones. However, due to Android handset makers’ stress and the call from clients who are green with envy or developing familiar with the one’s larger monitors, Apple is reportedly setting a four-inch display on the following iPhone.