Android Co-Founder: Fragmentation "an Overblown Issue"

curtwoodward writes "Sure, developers might pull their hair out trying to keep track of all the versions of the Android operating system scattered across hundreds of millions of mobile devices worldwide. But a co-founder of Android says the OS's fragmentation problem is being blown out of proportion. At an event this week in Boston, Rich Miner — now a partner at Google Ventures — said some level of fragmentation is inevitable with Android's reach and the number of partners in the ecosystem. But things are getting better, he said, and in any case most consumers don't notice the difference: `This is a bit of an overblown issue, frankly.'"

Comments

Yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

This just in: Guy with stake in product says nothing is wrong with product. Film at 11.

Re:Yeah.

[girlintraining]

This just in: Guy with stake in product says nothing is wrong with product. Film at 11.

Thing is, he's not wrong. Most consumers won't notice. But then, most consumers wouldn't notice if their computer ran on little gerbils inside and the internet was just a series of tubes. But that's no excuse for his handwave. Fragmentation is a problem. Maybe it's not a severe one -- maybe not yet. Maybe developers can muddle through. Maybe, even everything is fine. For now.

But complacency will always get you a kick in the ass by the next best thing in technology, and you can go from cutting edge to curdled milk in no time at all. Iconic brand names of even a few years ago are now nothing more than sign posts in the desert -- Compaq. E Machines. 3Com. They were once all major brands and now they're dust. If you want to stay on the leading edge, you have to push the boundaries. You have to innovate, improve, refine, create. You can't talk about "ecosystems" and "platforms" like they're going to just go right on existing on their own, like they're some timeless thing.

They won't. Android will die someday; Everything does. The only question is how long it'll last -- and if you want that question to be "For a long time yet," then you best listen to the people who work with it every day and say "This is a problem." And you'd better answer back with something better than "No it's not." Address the problem now, while it's small... because trust me when I say... if there's one thing computers are good at, it's multiplying trouble. Exponentially. Don't wait. Fix it. Fix it now. Before you're sitting on the ruined throne of a kingdom of dust.

Re:Yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

May not mean much to most around here but I left Android because of a fragmentation problem or at least what seemed to be a fragmentation problem. I went Apple to get away from the nonsense and since then I've become a 'switcher' and I'm happy for it.

Re:Yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

You had me until the last line. I don't think Microsoft has a lunch to eat here and Apple is still the one making the vast majority of the money. Quantity is a quality all its own, but come on?

I saw this as someone who had an Android phone, liked it, but bought an Apple phone when it died. At full price (I was under contract with my carrier still) without a second thought. I'm not saying I'll never go back, but not at full price. And that's an important distinction, I think.

Re:Yeah.

[macshit]

Apple is still the one making the vast majority of the money. Quantity is a quality all its own, but come on?

Are they making the vast majority of money? There's a great deal of hardware competition in Android phones, which means no one manufacturer does the kind of volume Apple does, but many Android phones seem to have very similar hardware specs and very similar prices to the iPhone, and the overall volume of Android phones is greater than the volume of iPhones; in places like Japan, the overall volume of high-spec (iPhone or better) phones is probably greater than the volume of iPhones. Apple can profit somewhat by taking advantage of volume pricing for components, but many of their competitors are very large companies, with significant sway of their own.

I think Apple thought they'd have iPod-like market domination in this market, i.e., no significant competiton. Despite the iPhone's obvious popularity, Android really threw a spanner in those plans.... [Thus Steve's fury...]

Re:Yeah.

[oursland]

Thats the extent of fragmentation technical issues.

No, that's not correct; the problem goes further. On some devices things display differently, even though they have the same version of Android. On some devices you have access to audio/video codecs that aren't available on others.

In the end, this lack of cohesion meant my company stopped developing their A/V application because there was too much variability, even when versions of the Android OS were the same. When this happens we lose out on a market, but the customers never get a chance to use and enjoy our applications.

Re:Yeah.

[the_B0fh]

So close, yet so far.

Why do you think a developer would target 4.2 when he could get a bigger market if he targets 1.5?

So what are the main reasons he would *NOT* target 1.5? If all a developer has to do is target 1.5, then why are all the android fanbois getting a boner whenever a new version comes out?

Please sit and think for a while. There *IS* a fucking difference between 1.5 and 4.2. And the extra functionality is expressed by new APIs which make it simpler for the developer to write stuff, and interoperate with other stuff written to that set of APIs. What havoc would it be if everyone reimplemented their own SSL layer?

If you think really hard, you may finally understand why it's fragmentation.

Re:Yeah.

[rtb61]

Fragmentation is never ever going to be a problem for Android because 'specifically' it is a design feature, it's called choice. The only people who consider the choices available to manufacturers and customers in Android to be a problem are, tah dah, Apple and M$ and I'll let everyone guess why, with out bothering to state the obvious.

Yes , oh my god, Android will fragment because it was bloody designed to do so. However the will be the main 'hmmm' tine (one word as good as any other) as governed by Google in this case, around which other manufacturers will base their fork, drift away from and drift back to based upon customer feedback. Google also has the opportunity to include bits and pieces from the forks back to the main tine.

Choice, choice, choice, those choices the manufactures make with regard to Android and the choices in hardware it is used to control and how the customers alter their choices based upon product presentation, peer reviews and experience.

Fragmentation in Android is a problem, and it is a problem for Apple and M$ because it allows multiple development streams which can test consumer reactions for far more rapid product development and implementation, as well as of course providing customers far greater choice and of course individuality. Apple and M$ phones for people who wish to conform to their overlord manufacturers choices, who wish to look and behave exactly like their overlords designed market segments, for people who like to have the choices made for them.

BS

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is NOT overblown at all. There is a serious problem when there are apps that require a specific android version or device and the numbers are increasing.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a SHITTY APP problem, not an Android problem.

If your app only runs on one version/generation of the OS you should probably give up coding and get a job at Macdonalds.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

When you're pissing off your user it doesn't matter who's problem it is.

What improvements?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google marketing: you botched this one. First you claim the improvements are amazing, then you claim most users don't even notice? Either the amazing features arn't getting used, or they are not better. Either way, I don't see how thats a good thing.

Re:Most don't notice the difference

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that really true, though? There's an unfortunate tendency in the tech industry to talk down to the "average user" as though they had never even seen a computer before.

How to make sure you NEVER say that again: get a job working tech support.

What you will say instead: "My God ... I ... I ... I had no idea..."

Re:Most don't notice the difference

[Anonymous Coward]

Tech support rant time:

I did tech support initially. You will mourn for the human race (especially the race of your home country or country calling in) as a gestalt after a while after dealing with all the calls you get, day after day. To boot, a good chunk of these people have an attitude problem, as if they are proud of the fact they broke something and are getting a lackey to "fix" [1] it for them.

Here in the US, being a loud-mouthed Luddite is encouraged. STEM and computer literacy is for outcasts, people who will never make the football [2] team.

Of course, with the floodgates open for businesses to get cheap H-1Bs, there is never need for most Americans to even give a rat's ass about how something works or learning basic IT skills such as how not to get one's computer constantly compromised.

Of course, this means long term the country is fucked [3] when it comes to mattering in the global scheme of things, but most Americans care more about a Jersey Shore rerun than actually trying to learn relevant skills in science and technologies.

[1]: When I say "fix", I mean get in a state of acceptable use. This sometimes can never happen with some people.

[2]: US football.

[3]: I normally write fscked... but this case, the full vulgarity is the thing that works. I'd LOVE it if the us were fscked... that means we would have a consistent filesystem and working metadata.

Re:Catch 22

[CastrTroy]

How does Apple have forced obsolecense? They actually release upgrades for their phones. Even the 3GS can run IOS 6. For the new IOS 7 they're dropping support for the iphone 3GS, but that phone's getting pretty old now. Sure there will be problems with running programs that require faster processors on the old phones, but Android has the same problem. Android has the additional problem of developers having to support 3 or 4 different OS versions in order to support all the devices. Also, with Android, there's the problem that if your phone wasn't one of the popular ones, there's a lot of stuff that doesn't work with it, and finding accessories for them can be almost impossible. Even getting unofficial upgrades for unpopular phones using things like Cyanogenmod is impossible since they only support popular phones models.

Re:Catch 22

[Desler]

Yeah, Apple continued to give it OS updates even after it was discontinued. That's pretty much the opposite of "forced obsolecense". I had the T-Mobile Galaxy S that shipped with 2.1 that was supposedly going to get the Android 2.2 update from Samsung "just around the corner" and yet that didn't materialize for over a year after I bought it. And then it never officially got Android 2.3 since Samsung had long since moved on to the SII.

Re:Consumers may not notice ...

[Ark42]

As if those older 2.x devices would ever get a 5.x upgrade anyway, so it doesn't really matter. Just target 1.6 or 2.1 and don't worry about it. If you're running into weird issues on certain phones, you're probably programming something too specific, and not doing things right because your code is sloppy or trying to be cute. Program in a more general manner and your app works just fine on all devices.

Re:Most don't notice the difference

[viperidaenz]

My wife recently bought a new phone. She didn't just want a phone that runs apps.
She wanted a white one.
It also had to play that god forsaken game The Croods (which works flawlessly on my 2.3 android, her 3.something tablet and her new 4.2 phone. What's this fragmentation problem again?).

It's not a user problem, its a developer one.

Serious problem

[kbg]

The problem is that most phone vendors (basically all except Google) never update the Android system after the phone is released. This means that there are millions of phones stuck on some ancient versions of Android but many apps for Android are targeted at specific version which are constantly getting higher and higher because Google keeps pumping out new versions of Android.

Re:Consumers may not notice ...

[hsmith]

Exactly. Anyone who says fragmentation isn't an issue clearly isn't doing Android development.

I find the platform a breeze to actually develop for. But, the issue is in testing and QA. The dearth of devices out there with hundreds of variations has created an unsustainable environment to deploy against.

Google really should be pushing any manufactures that want to license the Android name to properly implement the APIs. Failing to do so is creating quite the issue.

Much better than iOS.

[csumpi]

From the start Android was designed to support a variety of hardware, including screen resolution, screen aspect ratio, keyboards etc. On the other hand every time a new iDevice came out, Apple just made hacks to get them to work (eg. image for retina screen loaded by hard coded @2x at the end of the file name). There are 5 screens to support for iDevices, and it's a major pain in the arse. On android, hundreds of different screen configurations done very easily.

IOS has the same problem

[MarcoAtWork]

I have a still perfectly functioning ipod touch first gen where I can't basically reinstall any of the apps I own because the current versions of them in the app store are not compatible with my IOS version. If I decided to wipe it and resell it it would basically be a paperweight for anybody who purchased it as they would not be able to install anything on it.

In the end companies should be free to EOL old versions of their OS, obviously, but there should be an official way to get versions of apps compatible with your old OS if the app existed already in the first place. If I have app foowiz 1.3 that runs just fine on OS 1.0 and recompile it to have a minor enhancement and the toolkit now makes it mandatory that I can support only OS 2.0 and up, there should be a way for OS 1.0 users to keep downloading 1.3 while everybody else moves to 1.4 and above.

It would definitely be a lot more environmental to allow customers to keep using their old devices, or sell them (rather than tossing them) not to mention that it would make them more likely to buy more of your devices since they would trust that said devices would remain supported in the future.

He is disconnected from the real world

[Stan92057]

He is disconnected from the real world as most rich people are. They dont experience the world as people who make say under 50,000.00 bucks a year. Something doesn't work get a new on done deal.

OS fragmentation vs many different OS

[codemachine]

Sure, Android fragmentation is a real issue. However, before Android, just about every phone manufacturer had its own operating system, and it was difficult to do development for.

It isn't like if Android didn't exist, everything would just run iOS. If Android didn't exist, we'd likely have a situation where every vendor has their own entirely different platform. That'd be real fragmentation in the phone industry.

Right now, Android is much like Windows. You don't know exactly what version a user will have, and what hardware and configuration they'll have, but at least there is a set of common APIs you can rely on. Thanks to majority market share, you can develop an Android app and get a massive chunk of the market, even if that app needs some code to deal with specific versions of Android.

Re:Well, I can tell you're not an Android develope

[AmiMoJo]

Simply not true. Compatibility issues are almost always down to differing hardware/drivers. That's the same on any OS except for iOS where Apple tightly controls the hardware too.

I've done Android development for an industrial product using Bluetooth. Didn't see any issues, the API is stable and just works. If I ever do discover a device that has issues I'd first assume it was down to crap hardware, not the OS.