Android Fragmentation

The slow release of the latest Android OS (Ice Cream Sandwich) has now brought to light once again one of the biggest problems facing Android, fragmentation. Currently the newest OS from Android is only being used by 6.2% of their users (which is up from where it was a couple months ago) thanks to the upgrades that some users are doing, but the majority of Android users are still a couple versions back. Now the biggest issue that developers will be facing is which version of Android do they focus on since the majority of users are using older releases and the new ICS platform is suffering from slow adoption? BGR has more on this story.

Google updated its Android version tracker on Monday, revealing that the latest version of its mobile operating system — Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich — has more than doubled its installed base over the past month. Unfortunately, that only carries Google’s current Android build to a 2.9% share of all devices. Combined with Honeycomb, this means that as of March 2nd, just 6.2% of Android devices are now running a modern version of Android. Meanwhile, the bulk of Android devices run the 15-month-old Gingerbread operating system (63.7%) and the second most popular version of the platform is the 23-month-old Froyo OS (23.1%). First unveiled in October 2009 and currently at 6%, Android 2.1 Eclair is still found on nearly as many devices as Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich combined. Read on for more.