91% of the Android market is covered by 3 major versions (2.2, 2.3, and 4.0). 72% is covered by just two major versions (2.3 and 4.0).
This problem isn't quite as severe as its made out to be. Dealing with the diverse hardware ecosystem and implementation bugs are both much larger problems, IMO.
Yes, it's exactly like saying that. Windows has several years between each version and each version still has like 30-40% each, so it's quite fragmented, too.
Microsoft has always been quite good in backporting their developer libraries. So even you did have users on XP you could simply bundle these with your app e.g. .Net, DirectX.
Google may have to look at doing something similar for 2.3 users in particular.
You're obviously not a Windows or Android developer :)
Backported to XP APIs have always been limited and just building software for XP is becoming increasingly difficult (probably as it should be, but the reality is that there are a lot of XP machines still out there), whereas building for both Android 2.3 and 3.0 is laughably simple. You lose out on some APIs, but most of the best stuff is in the support libraries. The "fragmentation" for OS updates (IMO) is really only a serious negative for the end user not getting new stuff, bug fixes, and security updates, not a real negative for developers (yet).
The bigger fragmentation problem for developers is different hardware and different drivers, but OS updates would not generally help with that since the vendors are probably worse with fixing driver bugs than they are with updating their phones (and that "fragmentation" is rather overblown, in any case).
> [Windows] is fragmented. But not in the developer sense.
We develop windows applications and have to support XP and up. We certainly notice fragmentation "in the developer sense".
To give some examples, we can't use true filesystem transactions[1] or the ribbon UI[2]. These aren't available as "backported developer libraries". Sometimes we run into bugs[3] which were never fixed in earlier versions.
Microsoft has been good at backporting their developer libraries? And we are talking about phone right? So...Windows Phone 7 (silverlight) to 8 (WinRT), or even from Windows Mobile 6.5 (WinForms, OpenGL) to Windows Phone 7 (Silverlight) . How much backporting was/is being done?
Right, but the original topic was about phone and Microsoft's great back porting reputation just hasn't shown up there. There is something hard about the problem and none of the major players are taking that approach (Apple doesn't backport, just supports old hardware with new versions until it unsupports them).
If Google would only release 1 major version of Android per year, like everyone else, they would bring those numbers for only 1 version of Android before the next one is released, instead of 2.
I understand why they had to showcase Android 4.1 now - to release with their brand new tablet. And Android 5.0 will be released this fall. But next year they really should just release Android 6.0 at I/O (their biggest and most professional event), and be done with it. Then Android 7.0 at I/O in 2014 and so on.
This problem isn't quite as severe as its made out to be. Dealing with the diverse hardware ecosystem and implementation bugs are both much larger problems, IMO.