Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
He's correct, the fragmentation issue is quite overblown, especially when compared to Android ‘Master Key’ Security Hole Puts 99% Of Devices At Risk Of Exploitation.
And I'm just an end user who owns both Android and iOS devices. When I see the disparity in app quality on both platforms, especially in games, and hear developers explain why Android is so much more difficult to work with I'm going to take it at face value.
but I as a developer sure do notice. The biggest issue I keep running into (developing backend software for my companies frontend software) is that testing on a mix of devices means learning the quirks for every single manufacturers user interface that they have bolted on top of Android. We've also had some weird issues based upon the Android version installed, across two devices with the same Android version number (4.0 for example) with the carrier/device manufacturers changes we have a bug on one but not the other.
This is highly annoying.
One issue that Android users hail as the greatest thing since sliced bread (alternate keyboards) actually meant having to write work-arounds because some keyboard implementations were simply broken, or actually caused issues with entering text in certain situations. An alternate keyboard shouldn't be able to have that sort of an effect!
Fragmentation is real, and it is an issue. Consumers don't notice because they only use a single device, developers and power users that may switch more often than the average user will notice and it is an issue.
cat
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.
Maybe that was useful at one point, but these days assuming your users are unfamiliar and uncomfortable with technology seems laughable.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
He never said it wasn't a problem. He simply stated it was overblown - ie, it's an issue, but not as big an issue as people (read: Apple and Microsoft) are making it out to be.
This,
Fragmentation is a minor issue for developers, it only crops up when you're trying to do specific things. If you target Android 1.5 then it will work on versions 1.5 to current (4.2), however if you target 4.0, your application might not work on version 2.3.
Thats the extent of fragmentation technical issues. For the consumer, Google Play filters incompatible applications for them.
The big problem with fragmentation is that Apple and Microsoft have nothing worse to bang on about as Android eats their lunch.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
As the owner of a non-upgradeable Android 2.3 phone (Motorola Defy XT) I find that most apps I care about work fine on the phone... with the exception of all the new Google apps and updates to said apps.
Google Maps
GMail
Google Now
Chrome
all of these apps are either not available, or are only provided in downlevel versions. You have to be running 4.x to get the latest and greatest apps.
Meanwhile, Google produces versions of their apps to run on iOS 6, which is available on every iPhone back to the 3GS from 2009.
from what you are saying it seems android is more lenient about allowing you to target old devices.
They are, which is why software quality on Android lags iOS.
Apple at the moment does not let you submit to the app store anything targeting anything under iOS5 (a somewhat recent change after 6.0 had been out for a while).
This may mean some older devices drop out - but at this point the only devices out are some 1st gen iPod touches and the very first iPhone (not even the iPhone 3G which can run iOS5). That is not unreasonable and means that applications generally make use of new and advanced system features sooner rather than never.
In a world where Android developers pretty much have to target 2.0 devices as a base, you lose some ability to use advanced features to make a better app. That is dragging down quality all over and is only going to become more of an issue as iOS framework features advance...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...crashes, reboots, horrible bugs that render your device unusable.
So, yeah, he's right, that one problem is not significant when compared to these.
I can't help but feel that you've been a bit out of touch with the market, since you've got facts wrong on both sides.
First off, a correction in favor of Android and Samsung:
There's a great deal of hardware competition in Android phones, which means no one manufacturer does the kind of volume Apple does
Contrary to your statement, Samsung's volume is FAR greater than Apple's, though it's also split up over a greater number of models. As of April, they ship almost 2x as much, in fact. I do seem to recall seeing that the latest iPhone remains the most popular smartphone with the major carriers in the U.S., but if we're considering all smartphones sold, rather than just what's the single most popular model, and look at it on a global scale, Samsung is well ahead of Apple in terms of volume sold.
And then, an answer to your rhetorical question that seems to be contrary to what you expected:
Are they [Apple] making the vast majority of money?
Last quarter (i.e. launch quarter for Samsung's flagship Galaxy S4) Apple only managed to bring in a paltry 57% of the profits in the global smartphone industry, with Samsung taking 43% (well, technically, LG came in at a hair under 1% if you look into the numbers carefully, but they got rounded out in most of the articles on the subject). Every other smartphone player is either break-even or losing money. The reason I call it "paltry" is because it's actually down from their high the previous year when they managed to capture 74% of the profits, leaving Samsung with 23%, HTC with 1%, and the rest at break-even or a loss. So, yes, to say the least, they are making the vast majority of money, though it's certainly not as vast as it was last year, since the gap has shrunk from 51% to 14%, mostly because Samsung has been doing very well and Apple has cut their profit margins by putting out devices with higher production costs (the iPhone 5 is notorious for being difficult to manufacture due to issues such as its micron-level tolerances during manufacturing and assembly).
Anyway, there's definitely an argument to be made that the cheaper Android phones are winning massive amounts of market share, but it's like the old joke about the shop owners who are losing money on every sale but plan to make up for it on volume. The only winners in this are the ones selling the "high-spec" phones. The rest are trying to buy their way into third place and are paying for it out the nose.
Last year's version of Android is 4.1, and Chrome runs fine on it. 2.3 is ancient. Yes, some manufacturers are still shipping it, but if you pay £40 for a phone do you really expect the latest and greatest?
At this point the majority of Android users are on 4.x.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I don't think Microsoft has a lunch to eat here
Their lunch isn't up to much, but their breakfast and dinner are on the table for Android to grab as well.
Plenty of OEMs are unhappy about being shafted with W8 and the attempted shafting with Surface. They're adapting Android for desktop use, and putting VERY heavy resources into improving the Office-type apps. Windows is already in steep decline, and once enough people are off the OS lockin treadmill, they'll expect Microsoft Office to work with the documents they're producing on their tablets, laptops, phones and Android desktops.
Microsoft will be forced into a position of having to be compatible with other tools and having to compete on merit. Unless they have several rabbits to pull out of hats, they're screwed.
MS know this and they're fighting VERY dirty. Expect more SCO/SecureBoot/OOXML/WebRTC/Java/Stacker/IBM/etc etc antics from Redmond in the near future.
Except that doesn't really matter because most of those features are user-level features, and not a part of the SDK anyway. And Apple's support for backwards compatibility makes it trivial to handle missing features anyway.