Android fragmentation
With six releases in just a year and a half is Android risking extreme fragmentation? Or is this just the way Google does business?
It’s been only 18 months since Android 1.1 was released by Google. Since then there have been no less than six releases, each with a host of new features, capabilities and limitations.
There are some commentators that argue that the pace of development is a threat to Android’s future as it fragments the market into different versions of the operating system.
The logic is good. With new versions of Android being released roughly every three months it’s difficult for developers and distributors to keep up.
It’s also difficult for customers to keep up. The average mobile phone user doesn’t want to have to be an expert on Android releases just to use their phone. Application compatibility also becomes harder to manage.
According to Google’s data while Android 2.1 is the most commonly used version of Android, versions 1.5 and 1.6 are still very common. So common that close to 45% of the Android phones accessing the Android Market in early July ran version 1.5 or 1.6.
The full breakdown looks like this:
- Android 1.5 – 21.3%
- Android 1.6 – 23.5%
- Android 2.1 – 53.1%
- Android 2.2 – 1.8%
More importantly, each of these versions has a different API (Application Programming Interface) version which makes it particularly difficult for developers to cater for all eventualities.
The speed of releases is unsurprising given the fact that Android is a Google product. Google has a history of rolling out rapid releases. The company’s browser, Chrome, has a similar release cycle. The first version was released in September 2008. Version 5 was released in May this year, just 18 months later.
Android’s chief Andy Rubin has said, however, that the pace of development will begin to slow down. He said that in the near future new releases will be made just once a year and that the initial flurry of releases was part of a process of bringing the platform “up to spec”.
For now, however, the pace continues and Android 3.0, also known as Gingerbread, is scheduled for release in the fourth quarter of this year, making it seven releases in under two years.
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