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.

[viperidaenz]

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.

Re:Yeah.

[mjwx]

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.

Re:Yeah.

[LesFerg]

Thing is, he's not wrong. Most consumers won't notice.

I certainly noticed when Google Chrome would not install on my android 2.3 phone, which LG refuse to provide any further updates for.
In fact Google seem to be the most inclined to produce apps which will only run on the latest version of android and bugger anybody who hasn't thrown out last years tech and bought something new.

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.

[the_B0fh]

You don't understand what is fragmentation. In context of the Android discussion, it's not about what kind of bloatware was installed or not installed, required, or not required. It's about the different versions of Android in use. If you want to target your app at 1/3 of the Android market, you can write towards Android v4.0.

If you want to target your app towards 3/4 of the market, you write towards Android v2.2. If you want to hit higher percentages of the market, you have to go down to earlier versions of Android.

Obviously later versions of Android have features and functionalities you can leverage, improved security, etc. Earlier versions of Android means you have to write those yourself, or just not use that feature.

Compare this to iOS. If you want to hit 99% of the iPhones on the market, you write towards iOS 6.0.

Re:Yeah.

[Anubis IV]

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.

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.

Re:Yeah.

[Dog-Cow]

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.

Re:Yeah.

[AmiMoJo]

Your mistake was expecting a relatively young OS to provide you with a codec that could do some pretty unusual stuff. You could bundle your own codec, Android supports native code for performance.

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.

I disagree

[twistofsin]

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.

Re:I disagree

[Ark42]

As a developer, I can say hands down that iOS is WAY more difficult to work with than Android, for completely unrelated reasons. The whole fragmentation thing is more or less something I ignore. You have basically two choices: Program to a older API, and ignore all new features, or, Program to a newer API, and ignore all older phones. I've chosen to always target Android 1.6 and my apps always have no trouble running on new phones. I've seen a feature that only exists in newer APIs that I really can't live without, so I always code around anything that requires 2.2 or 4.0, etc. It's not a big deal at all, and all the documentation is very good about stating which API a function requires, plus the Eclipse IDE will automatically show warnings for anything you try to use if you declared a target API older than something requires.

Consumers may not notice ...

[0x000000]

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.

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: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.

Re:Most don't notice the difference

[MrEricSir]

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.

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]

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.

More accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

More accurate version: "Android co-founder says that users don't notice fragmentation, because OEM customizations make the phones shitty no matter what version they are."

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:Most don't notice the difference

[mjwx]

Because they have no clue what they are buying. They just wanted a cheap phone than runs apps.

Which is why high end Galaxy S# and HTC One phones sell so well huh?

Remember that a $350 Nexus 4 is in the same category as a $900 Iphone. So in that context, what you say is half true (I'd wager good money that Iphone buyers know less about phones than Android buyers), but a cheaper phone is not a crappier phone (in fact, between the Nexus 4 and the Iphone, you're getting more phone for less money).

To everyone who thinks it is overblown...

[Fosterocalypse]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/195310/Video_iOS_Android_myths_dispelled.php Here is a post mortem from a game developer who released two mobile games on iOS and Android. He briefly explains that both of the games ran perfectly fine on all but 3 devices. They weren't targeting a specific version of Android. They're supported devices were over 1900 devices for each game. So the fragmentation isn't as big of an issue as Apple likes to talk it up to being. And after the T-Mobile announcement today the fragmentation should only get better from here.

Here is one thing that I do notice

[dudeman2]

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.

Re:Most don't notice the difference

[AdamThor]

[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.

I understand that the government is working on the metadata thing...

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.

Re:IOS has the same problem

[Moof123]

Ipod Touch 1st gen came out in 2007, replaced in 2008 with second gen. So you have a 5-6 year old widget that is no longer supported, big whoop.

The truly shameful thing about Android is that you can still buy brand new Android phones sporting 2.3.7 that were will NEVER be offered an upgrade despite being a malware magnet out of the box. Most iOS devices get several major upgrades, for years after they have been replaced, before being put out to pasture.

I have a mix of iPods, iPads, and an Android phone, and frankly I have to say Apple does a darn good job avoiding fragmentation and avoiding the love'em and leave them feeling you get buying an Android widget. Apple is in real danger of being badly undercut thanks to their gouging for RAM and flash memory that has not budged over the time that prices have plummeted, and expectations of soared. I would like an iPhone, but frankly the level of gouging just goes too far for me to stomach.

Re:IOS has the same problem

[Anubis IV]

Two quick statements, and then the rest. First, I agree fully with your comment. Second, I disagree with your subject line entirely, since the OP was describing a completely different problem than the one you're addressing.

I agree that OSes need to be EOL'd and that there's nothing wrong with companies doing so, but that it would be far better if they wouldn't take steps to obsolesce devices before their time by making it more difficult than necessary to continue using a perfectly functional device. That said, wouldn't you agree that there's quite a big difference between EOLing your iPod touch almost two years after it was no longer on sale, and what we see with many Android phones, where they're effectively EOL'd while they're still on sale? That's the sort of problem the OP was talking about, rather than the one you discussed.

Your iPod touch:
  Last available for purchase in September 2008
  Came with the latest version of iOS at the time of purchase
  Capable of running the latest version of iOS until June 2010

Contrast that with T-Mobile's Android offerings, all of which are available for sale today, yet only two of them (the Nexus 4 and the Galaxy S4) out of the fourteen listed will be running the latest version of Android when you open the box of your "new" smartphone. Some of them support upgrades, of course, but not all of them, and many of those that do offer upgrades only upgrade as far as 4.1.2, which hasn't been the latest version of Android since last November. I'm sure if I went poking around hard enough, I could probably dig up some 2.3 phones that are still being sold as new today too.

So, yes, while both Android and iOS make it more difficult to use a perfectly functional, older device than it should be, the problem being addressed here is an entirely different one that Android bears.

Re:Master Key, anybody?

[Ash-Fox]

Of which is the default store on the vast majority of Android devices and for most users is the only place they get their apps from.

And resolved for 100% of them.

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.

Well, I can tell you're not an Android developer.

[Max Threshold]

Fragmentation on Android is a huge problem. Each device manufacturer has their own slightly different version of the OS, each with its own set of issues and incompatibilities. Sure, they only crop up when you try to do specific things... like, say, open a Bluetooth socket.

(I am an Android developer responsible for testing my company's product on dozens of different tablets.)

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.