I thought testing a bunch of browsers for my web apps sucked.
If seeing that doesn't scare you...you obviously don't care much about testing or user experience.
Android's "Extreme Fragmentation," Colorfully Visualized by TweetDeck's Team
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Re: Android's "Extreme Fragmentation," Colorfully Visualized by TweetDeck's Team
#12For how many of those phones did TweetDeck have to make special accommodations? That there are many OS identification strings is not itself a problem. Fragmentation ought to be measured by differences on non-fundamental axes. Screen resolution differences are a good thing for users who want a choice of form factors, and developers at least know that they have to deal with both big and small screens. Axes like "strange combinations of API calls required to make the GPS provide a current position" (I'm making that one up) have no associated user benefit. The issue of dealing with multiple releases from Google isn't helped by the handset manufacturers/carriers being slow to provide upgrades, but I'd sure rather deal with multiple, known API levels than worry about platform stagnation killing my business.
With that said, I have yet to write a mobile app, so I don't have real-world experience. It's the lack of definition around "fragmentation" that is bothersome to me. What are some real issues faced by those here who have targeted a wide range of Android devices?
Re: Android's "Extreme Fragmentation," Colorfully Visualized by TweetDeck's Team
#13If you read the source article, they say "From our perspective it's pretty cool to have our app work on such a wide variety of devices and Android OS variations."
Saying Android is fragmented because of many unique OS strings is kind of like saying the web is fragmented because of many unique user-agent strings.
It's apparent that TweetDeck understand this, but it seems Engadget just highlighted the "Fragmentation" aspect to drive page views.
Re: Android's "Extreme Fragmentation," Colorfully Visualized by TweetDeck's Team
#14"extreme fragmentation." Kind of like IBM compatibles? Or maybe Java-capable phones? Diversity of hardware is not something to be afraid of. Yes, it can cause a few difficulties, but it also provides a much wider market to sell to at the same time. Choice is good.
The first pie chart is split by hardware and shows only adoption (a good thing), not fragmentation. The second pie chart is split by OS ID strings. While it shows fragmentation, it hugely exaggerates it because it counts all builds of a given version, say of 2.2, as unique even though they are built from the same or similar (i.e. bugfixed) sources. Besides that, there a a lot of single digit builds that are unidentif…
Or imaging plotting the different user-agent strings for a website.
Re: Android's "Extreme Fragmentation," Colorfully Visualized by TweetDeck's Team
#15"extreme fragmentation." Kind of like IBM compatibles? Or maybe Java-capable phones? Diversity of hardware is not something to be afraid of. Yes, it can cause a few difficulties, but it also provides a much wider market to sell to at the same time. Choice is good.
You've left out other examples where diversity hasn't been the shit, like video game consoles, and spinning optical disks for playing back music or video. And your example of java capable phones isn't exactly a ringing endorsement for creating a large market for 3rd party developers, since most java capable phones are running 0 3rd party apps.
Look, fragmentation increaces costs. A well capitalized developer can cover those costs and do the marketing to drive the volumes needed to ensure a good ROI. The economics aren't as attractive to small developers.
Android could end up with a much larger market share than iOS, though they'll be fighting with Microsoft to get it.
Even so, that isn't enough to guarantee a good market for app developers. The Android marketplace hasn't exactly caught on like the App store, not yet.
Re: Android's "Extreme Fragmentation," Colorfully Visualized by TweetDeck's Team
#16Keep in mind that this is a ~35k user sample size of people downloading the TweetDeck beta application -- this is not "my mom" with an Android phone so I would recommend you don't look at this as a valid sample for the overall Android market.
The way to ensure the diversity remains compatible is by building a strong ecosystem around it that requires that compatibility -- the x86 ecosystem is a perfect example. By building applications that work with the Android mainline you create gravity forcing others to follow that path as well.