Android has one of the most fragmented eco-systems of any operating system on this planet. Opensignal released the latest results of its annual fragmentation report, and the company has recorded an explosion of devices running on Android over the last three years.
This year has seen some 24,093 distinct devices running on the Android OS. Which would a great victory for Google if these devices did not use every version of Android since the 1.0 (although the oldest version of Android record was admittedly version 1.5). All in all, there are at least 19 versions of Android in use in August 2015 – a situation that shows just how difficult it is for developers to make apps.
Android versions isn’t the only thing that fragments the platform. Screensizes are similarly all over the place, and range from 12-inches to 2.2-inches. This stands in stark contrast with Apple, which has complete control over its eco-system and limited the number of existing models.
The report also notes that while the overall market for mobile devices has grown, Samsung’s dominant share has contracted by a significant amount. The Korean company has gone from 43-percent of the global market share to 37.8-percent. However, this still means that Samsung remains as the largest smartphone manufacturer in the world.
It is also the most popular manufacturer is almost every country in the world. Only a tiny fraction of countries with collected data are dominated by a company other than Samsung. This is particularly noticeable in South American countries.
[Source: Opensignal]
