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Android Fragmentation Isn't Hurting Its Adoption
Nerval's Lobster writes "Apple's developer Website offers a new, handy graph of iOS fragmentation — which, of course, highlights that the mobile operating system isn't fragmented much at all. A full 93 percent of iOS users are on iOS 6, the latest version; another 6 percent rely on iOS 5; and a mere 1 percent use an earlier iOS. Compare that to Google Android, which really is fragmented: some 33 percent of Android devices run some variant (either 4.1.x or 4.2.x) of the 'Jelly Bean' build, while 36.5 percent run a version of 'Gingerbread,' which was first released in December 2010 — ancient history, in mobile-software terms. (Other versions take up varying slices of the Android pie.) For years, Google's rivals have used the 'Android is fragmented' argument to hype their own platforms. But is Android's fragmentation really hurting the platform? Not as far as global shipments are concerned. According to recent data from research firm IDC, Android's market-share stood at 75 percent in the first quarter of 2013 — up from 59.1 percent in the same quarter a year ago. Meanwhile, iOS owned 17.3 percent of the market — compared to 23.1 percent in the year-ago quarter. Whatever the drawbacks of fragmentation (and people can name quite a few), it's clear that it's not really hurting Android device shipments or adoption."
A naive observer might conclude that blanketing the entire market like falling snow would be an effective way to get complete coverage.
BTW, you Apple astrofurfers are special little snowflakes, yes you are. Just please don't melt all in one place when melting time comes. (Pre-emptive commentary to the usual horde of astroturd Apple cultmods.)
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
You're talking out of your ass.
Did you have to redesign all of your sites in HTML 5 to ensure that they would remain accessible to people using modern browsers? No? Are you suddenly unable to open up your old Office documents every time a new version comes out? No again? Then why do you think that apps suddenly stop working just because the version number increments? iOS continues to run apps developed for earlier versions of the system in nearly every case. There are some exceptions, to be sure, but they're in the significant minority, and the developers are given plenty of notice that the APIs they're relying on are being eliminated before that takes place. The vast, vast, vast majority of apps work straightaway, which makes sense, since it provides for the best day one experience with the new version of the OS. No one wants to "upgrade" and discover that their apps don't work, after all.