How Fragmented is Android ?

VERY.

Android is deeply deeply fragmented.

Android brags it has 75% market share. This is true. But let’s drill down a bit …

Android has 75% market share.

Pie has 11.26% of total Android market share.

Samsung has 5.0% of total Pie market share.

The Samsung Pie 5.0% is further split between 12 or so different device phone models.

I think you get the drift.

My guesstimates ... Android has about ...

12 OS versions,

12 main device manufacturers, and

12 handset models on average per manufacturer.

So the Android ecosystem is split between at least 1,728 combinations of OS - Brand - Device Model (Data). The majority of these devices do not get any updates from Android. Yet Google collects vast amounts of data from these devices that it uses for targeted ad placement.

Google acknowledges this problem with the launch of Android One. But given that every device manufacturer wants their own flavor of Android, it’s unlikely this fragmentation will stop any time soon.

This is a problem only time can fix … when all the old devices end up in the landfill and their owners (hopefully) buy a new Android device which offers latest updates. Probably another 5 years.

By contrast iOS 12.X has about 80.5% market share. The vast majority of iPhone users update to the latest version quite fast and flawlessly.

My POV is ... Apple leads the Mobile OS market share ... by a huge margin.

Data Analysis & Source Data: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ruifcPL9CFGabxBftZAlEzdv0JP0kM99/view?usp=sharing

Follow the discussion on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20015968