13 
Android haters are always quick to jump on the bandwagon of fragmentation, claiming that the Android landscape is actually just a crater-strewn land of old and new versions of the OS. They’re wrong. Some interesting stats show that almost 90 per cent of Android devices are running just three major releases of Android. Screw you, iOS.
The full stats are below for all your analytical pleasure.
Interesting article here I didn’t see on this site, apparently only 400,000 Nexus 4′s have been sold to date (due to low production).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jan/03/google-nexus-4-phone-sales
Cant believe they are still sold out! They need to step up in producing and shipping, they would easily be over the 1mil mark by now if the production weren’t so crippled.
I reckon it might not be a production problem. LG blames Google for not “ordering” enough Nexus 4. Now remember that the prices on the play store is heavily subsidized by Google. I read somewhere that you can buy the Nexus 4 off the street from LG directly, but the prices are much higher. So it could be that Google doesn’t want to subsidize so many phones.
From the article:
“…the excitement around the Nexus 4 suggested that it had been a broader hit. The figures from XDA-Developers suggest otherwise.”
I’m pretty sure as many people as possible have bought one. It’s just hard to get hold of one! This doesn’t reflect anything other than the amount of Nexus 4s Google ordered.
It’s definitely the most interesting phone on the market in years, due to the mental spec you get for your money, so of course it’s being talked about, as is the Nexus 7 currently trampling all over the tablet market.
The article does suggest Google only ordered a few because it would upset the general Android market too much, which is true.
Regardless of figures and speculation I love mine and if I had to choose a new phone again I’d still end up with a Nexus 4. It’s exactly what I wanted and I didn’t feel screwed after buying it whatsoever, unlike other products I’ve bought in the past.
400,000 nexus 4′s probably equates to around £100 million in sales revenue. Since the iPhones huge success, peoples perspective of what is and isn’t a successful product has become really skewed.
without evening opening that link i’d be willing to bet my house that article is written by that cunt Charles Arthur, the biggest apple fan boi in the history of fan boi’s. How the fuck that bloke is allowed to write for a so called independent news paper frightens me.
Are you related to @nero by any chance?
wow, some hatred there, did he kill your family or something (I hope not)?
Also, good guess if you didn’t check the link!
The bloke is pathetic, he even championed apple maps, then when the shit hit the fan came out with some crap about how it works fine for him and how google maps isnt perfect :’(
The chart just shows most devices have an older version of Android.
How is that a screw you to iOS?
Alright smartarse, what percentage of iPhone users are still on iOS 5, iOS4, or pre-iOS?
Dunno.
The answer is probably “more than Apple want you to ever find out”
Well, it’s only the iPhone OG and the 3G that dont support the newest iOS – from 3GS upwards it’s 5.0
and most apps now need you to be on 4.3.3 and above, there is definatley fragmentation but no where near the size of Androids, but then again it’s kind of obvious that it would happen with an open source OS with many devices.
I knew that!
“Android haters are always quick to jump on the bandwagon of fragmentation,” – Chris, do a search for “fragmentation” on Giz. There are some choice articles written by your colleagues on this very subject. One by a writer with the initials JD comes to mind.
Absolutely, and what makes all these ‘fragmentation’ articles all the more farcical is that the majority of them haven’t been written by programmers, the only people qualified to talk about ‘fragmentation’.
I didn’t realise you wrote articles here, after all, those are your initials in reverse
Which just goes to prove what I’ve said all along Diaz is the antichrist.
You’re going to end up with a skew eventually though as a result of JB covering 4.1 and 4.2 – All of Samsung’s recent devices are now technically running JB, even though it’s not the latest version.
The %age of devices running GB will only diminish as they’re retired, because most manufacturers won’t upgrade the older devices.
also of course as each new device with JB is released it will reduce the overall percentage of all other versions. Given the number of Android activations everyday this is not a small effect.
Is it really any worse than say windows? Think about all the users still running on xp, vista, 7, and 8 I’d say it’s probably quite similar.
Fragmentation isn’t just about the OS it’s running but also has a lot to do with the different screen sizes, processors etc etc.
and Apple doesn’t have that problem?
Nope. All iOS devices to date have had four screen sizes (3.5, 4, 9.7 and 7.9 inches) and five resolutions (480×320, 960×640, 1136×640, 1024×768 and 2048×1536), and 16 total device versions.
Not a significant barrier to developers to design for over 400 million devices.
Agreed. The fragmentation on Android is not only due to the OS it’s running, it’s also hardware fragmentation. Just because you are running the most dominant version of the OS doesn’t mean the app will work on your device. This problem is less prevalent in iOS.
The Android libraries are designed from the ground up to only necessitate development for two designs; phone, and tablet. Any half decent developer would stick to that.
Chris, did you look at the schematic? It looks pretty fragmented to me and a stroll down your local O2 (or whatever) shop will confirm that a lot of new handsets are sold with an earlier version of Android.
Well, if I had to write a caption under this graph in a lexicon, I’d write “Fig. 1: Fragmentation”.
I don’t share your point, bro.
Nearly half of Android devices are now running a version that is TWO years old. And you don’t think that’s a problem for compatibility? These stats don’t do anything to suggest Android’s OS version fragmentation is improving, and it’s not just the OS version that causes fragmentation, it’s screen size and hardware variation as well.
For comparison, difference sources suggest iOS version adoption is above 90% for iOS 5 and iOS 6. iOS 5 is way less than a year old.
I speak as an Android user. No iOS fanboy.
Yeah… I don’t think you understand the problem of mobile hardware and software fragmentation.
Slight difference when iOS updates come out yearly and not every 2-3 years. (In android’s case, you could see major releases more than once a year) On top of this, mobile OS updates are free for the user. Windows charge you £50 for the privilege.
“Android’s Not as Fragmented as sites like Gizmodo keep telling you it is”
There. Fixed that for you.
I expect that for a lot of people using the phones fragmentation is not a problem. Lots of people are happy with just the messaging & email apps, browser, facebook/twitter, camera and a couple of games. A 2 year old android phone is capable of still running well and being perfectly useable.
Being able to run on older hardware also means that the entry price point for android phones is a lot lower then for iOS devices. You can get a new phone running gingerbread for less then £50, compared to £319 for an iphone 4 (the cheapest still available new).
I doubt that most people using these cheaper phones will ever realise that there is an issue.
iOS 6 is available for iPhone 3GS… £90 second-hand. What 50 quid new Android phone is there that’s not junk?
Yes, it is available, but from what I have read they run better on older versions of iOS.
What I was trying to say is that different people have different ideas about what is junk. Lots of people just want a phone that works, and does a few cool things, or are happy with a cheaper entry level smartphone, or a second hand phone that might not be running the latest software version, but does everything that they want. I expect that a lot of people would never even notice that their phone isn’t running the latest software, or care about it if they did know.
A quick search of a high street retailers online site shows the LG optimus 3 and the motorola motosmart for under £50, with offerings from samsung, sony and htc if you spend a bit more.
How is this a screw you to iOS? Software is only part of it. Hardware is the main problem. Phones dating back to the 3GS can use the majority of iphone apps. Most android phones probably can’t even SEE half of the apps on the play store.
From this very site http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2012/05/when-people-discuss-android-fragmentation-this-is-what-they-mean/
So many different phones with entirely different specs. Screen sizes/resolutions, CPU type (intel/ARM/other), CPU power (Ghz/# of cores) and generation A9/A15/ect/ect), amount and speed of the RAM, GPU specs, amount of storage available to apps… I could go on and on and on. Any individual android phone can only see a fraction of the apps on the play store because they aren’t compatible.
Hardware is the biggest contributer to fragmentation and that’s what Google have to work on.
All this chart shows is that ICS and JB have gained a decent foothold which I’m glad to see. The sooner they can move the people using GB up to a more recent OS, the better.