“There’s an inherent flaw in Google Inc.’s Android operating system,” David Zeiler writes for Money Morning. “The flaw isn’t a technical glitch… The biggest flaw is fragmentation and it will be what prevents Google from defeating Apple Inc.’s iPhone in the mobile computing wars.”
“There are simply too many versions of Android running on too many (over 1,400) different pieces of hardware. And the issue gets worse with each new version of Android, as older devices are rarely updated,” Zeiler writes. “That’s a huge problem for Android developers, who need to write apps that will work on a bewildering array of possible configurations. And it’s starting to have an impact.”
Zeiler writes, “According to Appcelerator’s most recent quarterly survey of developers, interest in writing apps for Android phones fell 4.7 percentage points to 78.6%, and interest in writing apps for Android tablets fell 2.2 percentage points to 65.9%. By comparison, 89% of developers were interested in writing apps for Apple’s iOS, a number that has remained steady… Making matters worse for developers is that Android users tend to spend less money on apps than owners of Apple devices. According to a report last year by Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster, the Google Android Market (recently renamed Google Play) generated just 7% of the revenue of Apple’s iTunes App Store.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]