How Fragmented Is Android?

That's a rather dubious view of market share, parsing the definition to include only the most recent version of an OS. Under that mode of accounting, I'm sure MacOS enjoys market share "dominance" briefly after each October update of Windows. But if we extend Android version back just to 8.x then ~46% of all android devices are accounted for, and 46% of Android's total 75% of mobile install base is still quit a bit more than 80% of iOS's 23% mobile install base.

And even that I don't really care about. iOS is a great OS. What I don't like are sloppy definitions and methodology in something that presents as data analysis.

It's a stretch to say each manufacturer that puts what amounts to little more than a custom skin and vendor-specific apps constitutes its own distinct fragment. So too is it disingenuous to represent each point-release of Android as a separate fragment, especially when the author goes on to lump all iOS 12.x point versions together.

I'd also say that fragmentation, in some small way at least, works in favor of android users that have older versions installed because apps can't just target the latest version given that vendors don't push the latest updates to all users. It means older devices can still get many/most new apps on their devices. Contrast this to Apple, where not updating to the latest version can have an impact on app availability much sooner, while updating the OS tends to degrade (in my subjective experience) user experience significantly when you hit the second or third such update. Last time I had to update my kid's ipad to a newer iOS version it basically killed it. It was necessary so she could play minecraft again, but the device became unbearably slow, and minecraft crashed anyway. (My solution was to "upgrade" to an $80 kindle fire kids version, which plays minecraft quite nicely. That I'll admit is absolutely its own fragment of Android though)

For the most part it isn't a problem for us - we require Android 6+ and for the phone to have various sensors.

Some of our customers can't afford the latest or greatest Android devices - that's fine - we will do our best to support them.

Could Android do what iOS does? To a degree yes, they would just have to cripple phones forcing people to make the choice between newer software and a slower phone or leaving something that works just fine as it is....