Gartenberg: Android’s significant fragmentation could destroy Google’s platform ambitions
“When Android was announced, I wrote that if ‘Google can deliver, the impact could be huge,’ but I caveated a major issue: Google would need to prevent the market from fragmenting and allow it to succeed where other mobile and desktop Linux implementations had failed,” Michael Gartenberg writes for Engadget. “Linux fragmentation remains one of the many reasons the open-source OS has failed to capture a meaningful share of the PC desktop market, and Android is rapidly following a similar path by fragmenting into different versions with different core feature sets, different users experiences and run different applications.”
Gartenberg writes, “I recently tried to install one of the few good Android games and found it won’t work on Nexus One as it has a nonstandard screen resolution. This isn’t just about older devices either — many new devices were announced at Mobile World Congress running either Android 1.5 or 1.6. When does it end? Either Google addresses the fragmentation issue immediately or it will find that Android suffers the same fate as Linux on the desktop.”
