Oh really?
With all the buzz around Android at the moment, it's tempting to ignore the 'F' word. No, not that one. Fragmentation.
With handset makers like HTC, Motorola and Sony Ericsson all putting their own spins on the Android OS, not to mention using different versions of it in their devices, there's a risk of fragmentation, with developers having to think about a plethora of screen sizes, input mechanisms and technical capabilities.
It's nowhere near as bad as the Java world, but it's still been cited as one of the reasons many developers are wary of making the leap from iPhone to Android.
Google doesn't quite see it that way, though. "Everybody talks about fragmentation as a bad thing, but I think you need to look at it from the perspective of the developer," said Google's Eric Chu at the OpenMobileSummit in San Francisco yesterday.
"How much work does the developer have to do to address the fragmentation? If there are a million devices and they're in three fragments, they don't care."
Article continues belowAdvertisement
It's a fair point: developers are used to weighing up development and porting costs against potential rewards - and if new handsets like Motorola's Droid and Sony Ericsson's Xperia X10 sell in their millions, they'll rush to support them.
Even so, an ecosystem where the Droid can go on sale this week running Android 2.0, yet the Xperia X10 can go on sale months later with Android 1.6, clearly could do with a bit more structure.
