Android is mobile OS designed by google corporation that sees 12 activations per second. It is the most adopted OS in the world ( Though some of it's users don't know what an app is and what an app market is.) Android has an advantage of adoptability- It is open and can be adopted by any manufacturer. But the result is many apps undergo crashes and many apps needs updates like once every 2 weeks (mostly). This drives user crazy. For example, I have 100 apps in my phone and I want them to be up to date. So I update all my apps and in just a week, I get 15+ updates. So as they are not divided into crash-updates or feature-updates,I have to go to every app and should read the description to find out whether that app is worth upgrade or not.
Actually we see this many updates because devices are more,screen resolution is different and skin used varies from manufacturer to manufacturer. This becomes hard for a developer to write apps bug-free. Because one app would work perfectly well on a device and the same app would crash on the start on an another device though they both run the same version of Android. If they run different versions,thats an another story.
Talking about software-updates, here is where Android is broken. You get a phone with some version out of the box and chances are more that you might end-up with the same software for years till you purchase a new phone. This is because liberty of Android to make manufacturers and carriers to run their custom skins. My strong view is that many phones today can run the next version of pure vanilla Android. But adding a skin to would slow down the phone and so manufacturers are not willing to update their phones. The reason for my belief is- a 600 MHz processor powered X10 Mini can run ics if rooted and ported with custom rom but why not an unrooted Xperia Play which is powered with more than a GHz processor?
And if you are lucky enough to get a software update, you will be using the latest version for a maximum of 3-5 months. Because, after Android releases a software update, manufacturers play with that version add new skins, test that for at-least 6 months and then start the roll out. This rollout would take at-least 2 months to reach the users according to their carriers and SI numbers and all. Then 2-3 months after the update of your phone Android releases the next version of their OS making the last version obsolete. ( In Google I/O this year, in the demonstration of 'Project Butter', they made ICS obsolete by showing how fast their latest version is and how laggy the ICS is captured in a high speed camera though. The reason for me mentioning this is Xperia Mini has received the update just the day before I/O event and users are content that they are using the latest version for just a day )
Team Android had promised a partnership with OEMs to provide software support for at-least 18 months after the user has purchased a phone in last I/O conference. No discussion on that has taken place in this year's I/O.
Team Android had promised a partnership with OEMs to provide software support for at-least 18 months after the user has purchased a phone in last I/O conference. No discussion on that has taken place in this year's I/O.
Keeping users' aspects aside, developer community is the one that is affected the most. Because, though Android has great APIs to offer for developers in the newer iterations of versions, they can't make use of them because they can't write Apps for a significantly smaller portion of that pie. Today, according to stats released by google according to traffic in play store in 2 weeks, 64 % of users use GingerBread, 10% users use ICS and the others use still previous versions. A developer can't opt to write apps for just 10% of users. Instead he opts for 74% (Gingerbread and ICS) and so he cant use new APIs which ICS has to offer. So quality of Apps is significantly reduced. But in iOS which is hated by most tinkerers who doesn't like control of manufacturers, more than 80% use the latest version iOS 5. 3 year old iPhone 3GS runs the latest version and there's a planned upgrade to iOS 6 though some features are eliminated. So developer feels very happy because the Apps he writes making use of the latest APIs can run on more than 80% of devices. And as there's just a single store in iOS, developers need not fear for App piracy.
Finally, as it is better late than never, Android should concentrate on fewer models and fewer resolutions as Microsoft did with Windows phone 8. Android has defeated iOS on market share but there is not a single Android phone that competes directly with iPhone. And more over phones running the latest software of iOS are more than the phones that are running the latest software of Android. So Android, address the issue of fragmentation!
Fragmented Market is the main reason for drop in praise value of the good phones bought with in months this tremendous drop is not happening in manufacturers like apple,blackberry
ReplyDeleteTotal mobile market is fragmented in that case. No body looks at best Android phone or best iOS phone. They are looking for a great mobile altogether. In that case iPhone too is just one of the hundreds of mobiles in the market. So I don't think people go by praise value. And more over they are spending their hard earned penny in to buying a mobile. So they just want the best mobile. They never think the manufacturer it came from. It helps if its a great company but people don't think that way when spending hard I think. Apple is different though. I agree!
Deletewell i do agree that fragmentation is the only thing standing in between Google and total market domination . but users shelling out a mere 10,000 should not expect the latest even in android high end phones like galaxy s2 stay updated very frequently, if we take US and EU out of the stats apple is pretty much non existAnt IN ASIAN AND MIDDDLE EAST markets IT is the fragmentation of android that has lead to even buyers with 5 k in their pocket having a smart phone experience !
ReplyDeleteXperia Play costs 22k (bit more than iPhone 3GS) and hasn't had a single major software upgrade. Galaxy S2 costs 30k and took almost a year to upgrade to ICS (AT&T). Ya I do agree that Android is great in the case of providing smartphone experience for budget buyers. I am not ranting on Android but asking them to follow Microsoft in screen resolution aspect. Let's see how many updates does Google give to Nexus 7 which has Quadcore CPU and 12 core GPU and has no carrier contracts!
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