Comments on: Android Distribution Numbers Updated for September, Like Watching a Race Between Turtles

By: feztheforeigner

feztheforeigner — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 21:04:00 +0000

I saw one in the wild today and I was like holy crap that is bad a$$!

By: joejoe5709

joejoe5709 — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 20:24:00 +0000

The most disturbing part is the 18.3% still on Froyo or below. Jeeze… Get with the program!

By: michael arazan

michael arazan — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 09:13:00 +0000

Wait till next month after it includes the motorola JB on the new phones and GNex on sprint with JB too.

By: SavageJeep

SavageJeep — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 22:02:00 +0000

Whilst I agree with the advantages of buying a phone off contract, the people who we are discussing are not these folks. An individual who has a phone running 1.5 or 1.6 are not people buying bleeding edge technology with new phones every 6 mo. They are the parents and grand parents who have been with their providers long enough for their phones to become obsolete. They are fine with the phone because they’re complacent about their hardware, bill and provider. They should upgrade every 3 years and at least get a ‘freebie’. They’re not going anywhere.

By: Alan Paone

Alan Paone — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 19:41:00 +0000

Apps have to accommodate One OS, Android. Its only really bad apps that don’t work across versions, or apps with specific functionality (like 2.2+ push notifications or 3.0+ hardware acceleration). OEMs currently don’t seem to be putting much energy into either updates or features, so tackling fragmentation would actually take more work from them, even if Google decided to give up its biggest advantage and slow down. Fragmentation hasn’t hurt android yet, its the leading OS. The reason its winning is the speed at which Google is iterating, because if Samsung and HTC can’t keep up, then neither can Microsoft or apple. 80% of people can’t use Boid or Chrome, but that’s a small price to pay to completely own the market. Customers jumping ship bcause they still have gingerbread is a not as bad as customers not thinking that android is the most innovative, new hotness. Six months out of the year, people stop buying i*ones because the old one is old and the new one is coming. Android doesn’t have that because its always new and fresh.

By: Southrncomfortjm

Southrncomfortjm — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 19:22:00 +0000

That’s about 5 million devices based on Google’s 480 million installed based number.

By: Southrncomfortjm

Southrncomfortjm — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 19:21:00 +0000

By my calculation, 0.2% of 480 million is 960,000. Are there really 960,000 Android devices running cupcake? That, of course, assumes that the number Google states as their “installed base” only applies to devices currently in use rather than ever sold.

By: Southrncomfortjm

Southrncomfortjm — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 19:20:00 +0000

Lots of things would improve with less fragmentation I think: (1) Having only new OS per year saves phone producers the time and energy of constantly having to update old phones to new the OS. Less time spent updating old phones means better features, and maybe lower prices, on new phones. (2) Less fragmentation means better optimized apps. Right now, App devs have to accomodate 3-4 different OSes. Having only one or two OSes could all app devs more time to dedicate to new apps. (3) Getting more people on the newest OS will probably make them less likely to jump ship to Apple or some other OS. The more people that stick with Android, the better the Apps and support will get. Probably more out there.

By: Buckoman

Buckoman — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 19:18:00 +0000

And a custom written haiku from Eric Schmidt.

By: Alan Paone

Alan Paone — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 19:13:00 +0000

Screw choice and diversity! Gut the ecosystem so charts look prettier!

By: Alan Paone

Alan Paone — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 19:11:00 +0000

And a trophy

By: Alan Paone

Alan Paone — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 19:10:00 +0000

What does cutting down on fragmentation net us though?

By: Samuel Pagano

Samuel Pagano — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 18:50:00 +0000

all this fragmentation talk sounds like a geology class

By: Wolfman32

Wolfman32 — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 18:45:00 +0000

I love how my OG Droid is in the 1.2%

By: Buckoman

Buckoman — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 18:33:00 +0000

Okay. Anyone who’s bared with Cupcake or Donut for this long should be given a new phone or something.