Fragmentation in Droid'ville

[skeeter1]

(Mods: this might not be the appropriate forum. Please move it accordingly. Just felt another quake here in SoCa:icon_eek:l.. )

Opinions on the "fragmentation in the Android market?

Report: Android fragmentation could harm growth | Signal Strength - CNET News

Cheers!

 

[cabotcat]

Certainly a valid point overall but a truncated article to say the least. Fragmentation occurs in any OS on any platform; nature of the business. Developers, including Google, learn more about an OS with a public release than in a controlled environment. Hence the need to respond to glitches, customer demand and competition.

Fragmentation is going to happen. However the advantage of open software far outweighs alienation of a statistically small number. Android growth will outpace all repercussions resulting from fragmentation.

It's not personal. It's business.

 

[JFDroid]

Rumor has it (and this rumor makes so much sense I'd go as far as to say Google would be absolutely insane not to do this - hence why I personally believe the rumor is true, but you should choose to believe it at your own discretion) that Google is going to, with the next major revision of the Android OS (called Froyo), start a different approach to updating. Who knows if they'll consider this "2.2" or "3.0" or "2.5" or whatever.

The rumor says Google is going to stop working so much on the core functionality of Android and instead move to better developing apps (GMail, Calendar, Phone app, etc.) and release these apps through the Android Market.

[Hypothetical] For example: Google will update the calendar application to have a better reminder system, and do other things well, and add some new features, maybe a better widget with more size options, etc. They will release this update via the Android Marketplace and then anyone who has the appropriate underlying OS version will be able to download the update (for example: maybe the update is limited to those running Android 2.0+).

This is a much better system that, while leaving in place a small amount of fragmentation potential, reduces the need for so many OTA updates and worries about many phones not getting certain updates. This way, more people get everything, and less people get nothing. It's overall a better system and makes a lot of sense to me.

 

[bananazx]

iPhones will be fragmented as well after the release of OS 4.0.

 

[takeshi]

Opinions on the "fragmentation in the Android market?

I don't really see the linked article adding to the existing discussions on the matter.

 

[Darkseider]

The fragmentation although it exists is minimal. Most of the problems occur with Android 1.5 devices because those running 1.6 - 2.x can pretty much run all the software except a few high end google apps that require 2.1. As for the 1.5 units most if not all have been updated to 1.6 and some are being bumped to 2.1 so again that issue will be pretty much squashed by mid year.

As for the hardware fragmentation that is a joke, right? Just because the OS runs on such a wide variety of hardware doesn't mean that is fragmented. Regardless of the underlying device the OS remains the same and functions the same as on any other device. Granted the overall performance may not be the same between a Devour and a Nexus One but the OS continues to function. As for the UI, who cares? They all provided something unique whether it be Sense, Blur or stock Android. Bottom line is they all run on the same OS.