Google Android 1.5, 1.6, 2.0, 2.01, 2.1? – The Android Mobile Operating System and Android Fragmentation

This will be a two-part series (edit: it looks like I won’t have the time to follow up this post, but I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on Android and perhaps we’ll see more Android related posts in the future), looking at the Google Android Operating System. In this first post, we’ll look at some of the statistics illustrating the fragmentation issue that Android is facing, and the next post will look at some of the different features of the different Android platform releases (or limitations of the earlier operating system versions).

One of the main mobile operating systems that the developers at work have been focusing their recent efforts on for MO-Call mobile VoIP is the Android OS- a good thing to hear, since I’m using the HTC Hero, and also because the Google Android operating system has been making huge progress and gains in the US smart-phone market share.

(Shameless plug: One of the achievements that we enjoy with MO-Call is our broad range of handsets that we support- over 1,800 handsets. If you don’t know what MO-Call is about head over to our website to learn more. But in a nut-shell, we offer an application so that you can make cheap international mobile calls and SMS from your mobile phone.)

As referenced by TechCrunch‘s recent article on April 5th looking at the smart-phone , Android’s share grew an impressive 5.2%, compared to the 1.3% gain of the smart-phone market leader RIM, Apple’s -0.1% loss, Microsoft’s -4.0% loss, and Palm OS’s -1.8% loss of market share (market statistics from comScore.com).

What is the Android Mobile Operating System?

The Google Android OS was originally developed by Android Inc., and it is an open-source operating system that allows developers to write managed code in the Java development language, and uses a modified version of the Linux kernel. Android Inc. was later purchased by Google in July of 2005 as began to move into the mobile industry.

Android has been available as open source OS since 21 October 2008, when Google opened the entire source code under an Apache License. Since it’s inception, Android has seen several updates to the base Operating System to fix bugs and add new features, however these multiple update releases, along with the open-nature of the system, have resulted in a fragmentation issue across the Android platform and Android mobile handsets.

Android Fragmentation – 1.1, Cupcake, Donut, and Eclair.

//Edit: (Updated stats grabbed on 04/16/10)

Google is clearly fully aware of the fragmentation issue with their Android mobile operating system, and have provided developers with a resource to keep up-to-date with the distribution of the different Android platforms in the market. The data shown above illustrates data collected over two weeks, ending on the first of April, 2010.  This data provided by Google is based on the number of Android devices that have accessed Android Market within this 14-day period.

//Edit (A friend at Google tipped me that there are new stats on the Dev site which now includes 2.1 data):
The Android platform version across Android devices in the market does look a lot  more evenly distributed (and we still don’t know exactly what the actual population size that this distribution is taken from), but we still see that 38.0% of Android users are still using the oldest Android 1.5 platform, followed by 31.6% of users running Android 1.6, and 30.3% of users on Android 2.x (2.0, 2.0.1, 2.1) devices, with a miniscule 0.1% of users on the oldest Android 1.1 platform (which I haven’t even seen or used before).
This still means that 69.7% of Android users are running older pre-2.x versions of Android, which is huge, considering that many of Google’s roll-outs for Google cloud integration doesn’t affect older Android platform users.

As we can see, of the devices that have accessed Android Market from March 18th to April 1st, less than a quarter of those Android handsets are handsets that are actually running the latest Android Eclair platform (Android 2.0/Android 2.0.1), and over 75% of those Android devices running older versions of Android, such as Android Cupcake (Android 1.5) and Android Donut (Anroid 1.6).

One of the largest factors of the fragmentation issue due to the open-nature of the Android operating platform, as different manufacturers began to develop different tiered handsets with earlier versions of Android on their lower-end smart-phone devices. Moreover, operators continue to release customized versions of their Android devices to differentiate their devices from competitors, but have been also known to prevent certain Android applications from running (an example being the Motorola Backflip being unable to run non-Android Market applications).

Android Operating System Downloads – The Answer to Android Fragmentation?

According to Engadget, Google’s upcoming release of Android Froyo will directly tackle the Android fragmentation question by taking a new approach and separating the Android platform’s components and standard applications from it’s core, so carriers and handset manufacturers will only have access to the base Android platform functionality, and allowing developers to create and expand the functionality of Android through downloadable applications through the Android Market. This seems like a feasible solution in moving some of the control back to Google’s hands, but we’ll have to wait and see how effective this solution is to reduce platform fragmentation.

What are your thoughts on the future of the Google Android platform? Do you think that the open-source nature of Android will be able to compete with the walled-garden strategy of Apple’s iPhone OS, where they control every aspect of their phone development to create a wholly unified device? Please leave your thoughts!