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Who's Afraid of Android Fragmentation?
Nerval's Lobster writes: The dreaded term "fragmentation" has been applied to Android more times than anyone can count over the past half-decade. That's part of the reason why game developers often build for iOS before Android, even though Android offers a bigger potential customer base worldwide, and more types of gaming experiences. Fortunately, new sets of tools allow game developers to build for one platform and port their work (fairly) easily to another. "We've done simultaneously because it is such a simple case of swapping out the textures and also hooking up different APIs for scores and achievements," London-based indie developer Tom Vian told Dice. "I've heard that iOS is a better platform to launch on first, but there's no sense for us in waiting when we can spend half a day and get it up and running." So is fragmentation an overhyped roadblock, or is it a genuine problem for developers who work in mobile?
...Variety of devices, Running different versions of the OS.
The first one IMHO is a strong point for Android since there's so many different devices you're likely to find what you want (cheap, expensive, large, small, metal build, removable battery...). In this respect Windows Phone also has an interesting number of devices (although infenitely less than Android) and iOS is horrible in this respect: You basically have this year's or last year's model, neither of which is exactly cheap.
The second one is definitely bad: Several versions of the OS having significant marketshare means extra work for developers, and fewer apps for users (since some require a version newer than you have). Windows Phone and iOS are much better than Android in this.