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Fragmentation vs. Obsolescence In the Android Ecosphere
whisper_jeff writes "Engadget has an interesting article up discussing whether or not Android is fragmenting. While the article discusses the concept that it may be more about handsets becoming obsolete at a dramatic pace rather than the OS fragmenting, it also begins by noting that there are currently five different versions of Android on the market, which implies there is a notable degree of fragmentation. Regardless of it being fragmentation or handsets becoming obsolete to new feature sets in a terribly short period of time, I believe this development cycle could turn casual consumers away and hurt Android's chances for long-term mainstream success."
You can specify the hardware and software requirements of your app in the manifest file and it will not show up in the market for devices which do not meet the requirements.
You can be incredibly specific. If you app requires an auto-focus camera then you can specify that and it will only show up for phones which have one.
I agree, in fact there was a blog article written by an android game developer that kinda mock'ed this notion of fragmentation.
Quote from the blog: "I'm lucky enough to have occasional access to lots of different Android devices via my work. The whole point of the Android approach to apps is that you can write an app on one device (or even an emulator) and deploy it across everything. In my case, that's been pretty true."