Michael Klurfeld — good article and great points.
I have had this very same discussion on my podcast — Android’s fragmentation. I don’t think that it’s as terrible as you make it out to be. The average person does not even understand what Android is let alone what version they are running. Just because Motorola is making version diferences a selling point still does not mean much. I do agree that there needs to be standards and Google and/or the Open Handset Alliance should implement a standard or two.
Hotspots are cool but most MNO’s charge extra for that feature. Exchange support is solid but most IT shops don’t allow unapproved devices to attach to their network.
Additionally, the OEM skins the handset. The subscriber does not see the OS nor does he actually (directly) interact with it.
Today the sales training release for Motorola’s upcoming Droid 2 leaked, and with it came a very interesting marketing point: agents are to compare the Droid 2’s Android 2.2 OS with other phones which are still stuck on 2.1.
Complaints of fragmentation across versions of Android are nothing new. 2.2 is the newest version of the OS, and yet due development cycles, we’re still seeing 2.1 devices just coming to market (I’m looking at you, Samsung). The G1, which was only killed off a few days ago, never made it past version 1.6. One of my less knowledgeable friends recently made the mistake of buying a Motorola Backflip, and that thing still has 1.5.
The problem is that ROM tinkerers make up a small percentage of the market. By and large, people don’t want to think about what they can do to get their phones to run optimally. And the problem isn’t hardware – even the G1 was bumped up to Android 2.2 by ROM hackers. No one wants to see that their cool new gadget is suddenly unable to do all the things that the new stuff can do. So if Android handset makers don’t work as hard to update older handsets as they do to make new ones, they may not enjoy good sales for too much longer.
