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| Apple Slamming Android and WWDC, from engadget.com |
This week at Apple's WWDC developer conference the dreaded specter of android fragmentation came up yet again. This lead me to reconsider the arguments from previous posts here, and here on what fragmentation can do to the android platform. The short answer is android needs to work on unifying the platform, but it still isn't the crippling platform destroying problem tech writers tend to liken it to.
Fragmentation, everyone’s doing it.
One of the notable things to come out of WWDC is that even though apple really only has to maintain the iPhone 4S, 4, 3GS, the iPod gen 3, gen 4, and the three versions of the iPad, not everyone is getting the best and brightest features of IOS 6. Now you may ask where that list of products came from, and that's fair. It came from the products available for sale on apple's website at the time of writing. I think if it's fair to include every product from every manufacturer since what appears to be the original g1 in all the charts about android fragmentation, it is more than reasonable include all the products that apple currently sells in a discussion of apple fragmentation. The fact that IOS isn't coming to the original iPad is a particular slap in the face considering it is barely three years old and people are much less inclined to by a new iPad every two years then a subsidized phone and as such expect some modicum of support for their purchase. That said there are significant hardware differences between the original iPad and even the iPad 2 and thinking about the future of the platform means leaving behind some less capable devices. I would only say that if we accept this premise for IOS shouldn't the same be true for android.
Users really don't care, I mean really don't care
We can split smartphone users into two categories, fanatics and normal users. It is obvious to anyone that I'd fall into the fanatic category. In fact, most people who write about tech fall into this category, that's probably why they got into it. Normal people on the other hand, just want a phone that makes calls, can go to the web, and download apps. Normally users just want a device that works while fanatics are looking to eke out the most out of their devices. The iPhone is designed for normal users, while android is really for fanatics. Ironically the fanatics tend to go for iPhone, and normal users tend to go towards android. These are of course broad generalizations as I of course am in the android camp, and there are a lot of normal users using iPhone.
The thing is normal users don't care about updates as much as fanatics. In my office, several of my coworkers have android devices. While they are certainly tech capable none of them are fanatics, none of them are going to root their phone, and none of the iPhone users are going to jailbreak theirs. They are normal users. This week T-Mobile released the ice cream sandwich (ICS) update for the galaxy S2, when I found out I asked my co-worker who has one if he'd updated, he hadn't. He didn't know or care an update was available. He asked me why he should upgrade, and while ICS is a remarkable improvement over previous versions of android in terms of stability, responsiveness, and design, there is very little that you can do on ICS that you can't do on the phone he was using right now. His phone worked well now, and he was happy with it, so why upgrade?
Would someone please think of the developers?
One common complaint about android is with so many devices developers have a hard time testing to ensure compatibility. To a degree this is a valid argument, if you’re developing a processor intensive game, or a camera app, there is a large amount of hardware variations that have a dramatic impact on your programs performance. This however is the exception not the rule. For everyone else: casual games, productivity apps, social apps etc., I have a solution to your developer woes: the Samsung Galaxy S3.
The Galaxy S3 is currently the best android phone on the market. It will be available on every US carrier as the Galaxy S3 (No carrier branding or differentiation, a first for android). Its sales are expected to eclipse the S2, which is important because Samsung currently controls 40% of the android market, and the S2 is by and large the most popular android phone available now. The developers of Flipboard played this just right. Flipboard for android was announced with the S3 as a limited time exclusive. The program was optimized for what should be a juggernaut phone but it worked fine on most phones, mine included. Still before they released it to the masses they released an open beta to find bugs and fix them. Yes, there are thousands of android devices and it would be impossible to test for all the different variations, but in practical terms hardware variation is fading quickly, to capture the amount of users available on android equivalent to the number of iPhone users the amount of devices needed to test on are similar to that of the IOS ecosystem.
Free Market Android
Developers need to think of the differences between Android and IOS, the same way businesses treat the differences between the US and China. One is a highly controlled economy with huge restrictions on what you can and cannot do (IOS/China), and the other is a variety of micro markets of various sizes fiercely competing with one another game of thrones style (US/Android). Both markets have their advantages and disadvantages, but neither market can be ignored, which is again why fragmentation will have little effect on the android platform in the long run.
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