Android fragmentation may be scaring some developers away
Android is on every carrier. Android is on many devices. Android is everywhere.
Unfortunately, this causes some problems for the green robot. Fragmentation exists because some manufacturers don't update their phones to the newest versions of Android, which makes the uninformed smartphone population stay on old software. For developers, this means more Android versions to write their apps for. And if a new report is completely true, those developers are starting to call it quits with Android.
IDC and Appcelerator conducted the study. According to them, "[They've] seen a steady erosion of interest in Android" from developers. The study took place on January 25 through 27 of this year, and asked 2,173 of the 280,000 developers who use Appcelerator's development platform. 484 of those also took a follow-up survey.
This most recent survey is the first one in which the two companies have seen the "erosion" of developer interest for Android.
"This slow erosion of Android is interesting because if you go back to the beginning of last year, Android was not quite neck-and-neck [with iOS], but pretty darn close."
There are certain steps that Google could take to get rid of fragmentation, but if I could only give the company one suggestion, it would be to give the consumer the option of timely updates or a different UI. It would cut down on fragmentation while still giving people the kind of choices that has made Android so popular.
[The Register]
