How Google could fix its Android fragmentation woes
There’s no doubt that Google is kicking butt and taking names with its Android smartphones. A recent report by the market research firm NPD shows that Android phones outsold Apple’s iPhone for the first time in the first quarter of this year. That effectively makes Android the second-best selling mobile platform in the U.S. — right behind RIM’s Blackberry devices, which have been entrenched in the smartphone market for years.
Android’s increased popularity, and eventual domination of the U.S. smartphone market, is inevitable. As I’ve written previously, its success will be driven by its sheer ubiquity. Android phones are already available on all major cellular carriers in the U.S., and they all carry a variety of devices that range from entry-level to high-end.
But that same ubiquity is also Google’s greatest issue with Android right now. There are simply too many versions of the operating system out there and that’s become a major headache both for developers and users. What follows are a few suggestions on how Google could help fix its platform fragmentation problem before it becomes an even bigger issue.
Looking back on Android’s first year on the market, there’s no denying that things have been rocky for Google’s ambitious mobile platform. There was little hardware diversity for the better part of the year, and with the hype surrounding the release of the Palm Pre, Android seemed almost instantly dated. For all of its initial hype, the platform never really seemed like much of a threat to the iPhone, and in many ways it was barely competing. It seemed as if Android was going to celebrate its first birthday merely running on the fumes of excitement from its launch.
