Photo courtesy of Phandroid
3,997.
That’s at least one organization’s guess at how many unique Android devices are in use today. If true, that is a staggering number of individual devices. And without a doubt that would corroborate the notion that Android is “fragmented.” Broken into millions of small pieces like shards of glass.
Or something like that.
The survey was released this week from the makers of OpenSignalMaps and it encompasses six-months of download data from their popular Google Play Store app. Overall there were 681,900 entries into the survey. In all fairness, the makers of the survey do not seem to take a stance on this being negative or positive, but there are some indications they believe it is the former.
Without question the predominant narrative the press derived from this survey was that Android is a very fragmented ecosystem, and that fragmentation hurts consumers and app developers. Furthermore, that fragmentation is just another reason to purchase an iPhone.
Is Android fragmented? Of course, that is not only a consequence of providing a free mobile operating system, it is the desired effect of providing a free mobile operating system. Is this a negative outcome? Yes and no.
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