Fragmentation Will Not Kill Android

Guess what? Android is here to stay. Fragmentation isn’t going to kill it any time soon.

I remember that when it was first announced, I indicated to my company that we should port our VoIP products to it. A year later we had a developer. Two years later a whole team. And with good reasons: at the time, I worked at RADVISION and my business unit dealt with vendors building embedded products – set top boxes, phones, smartphones and a lot of other things. Most were in a migration from VxWorks to Embedded Linux. The agile ones were asking for Android.

To me, almost anything with some interactivity in it that isn’t built by Apple should probably opt for the Android OS if it can.

This is why The Insider’s view on TM forum strikes me as a bit naïve:

Android’s biggest downfall is that Google loosely manages its ecosystem and has allowed the platform to mutate and fragment. Its OEMs and operators do not always provide timely updates to their handsets and tablets, if at all.

[…]

If Android does not head down the same route, it could well find itself where Windows CE and Windows Mobile found themselves on the past.

Two things to note here:

1. Google is rather strict in managing its Android ecosystem. If you haven’t read Andreas Constantinou’s Is Android Evil article then you should. I’ll wait for you.
2. Windows CE or Windows Mobile never got to the size of the ecosystem or wide use of consumers as Android does today.

Fragmentation is here to stay in Android and that is what makes it so great. I had a talk with an entrepreneur last week. Saw him holding a Samsung Galaxy S II. Asked him why he has no iPhone, as all new apps are done first on iPhone. He said he loved his Android because there’s more choice in it for things that cannot be done at all with an iPhone.

Different people have different views. Granted, most go for an iPhone, but an awful lot, myself included, are still happy with an Android phone.

As for the whines that Android Ice Cream Sandwich – the latest version of Android – has less than 3% market share? Give it time. A year ago, Honeycomb, its predecessor had less than 1% market share.

Google just released it officially. Handset vendors need time to adopt it and then push it to customers. And then you’ll see the rise. It has a longer route to get to consumers than an iOS so any comparison at this point in time is moot.

You can expect to see similar calls of fragmentation, doom and no adoption to the next Android version – Jelly Bean.

And while you are at it, check out my Android A-Z version naming. Got Jelly Bean correctly. We’ll see if I also hit Kurtosh or not.