New report compares Android OEMs: Motorola is the fastest with updates, Sony has lowest crash rate

One of Android’s least desirable aspects is updates. There are new updates available constantly, but depending on the device you have, you may not see if for quite some time. Some OEMs are good at pushing updates, and others, well, not so much. Thanks to a new report from Apteligent, we now know who is best, who is worst, and much more…

Looking back to Android 6.0, this report shows us how long it took OEMs to update devices compared to when updates were released. Of course, Nexus devices are excluded as those get updated within the first several days/weeks. To create the report, Apteligent looked over data from Samsung, LG, HTC, Sony, Motorola, and ZTE. Follow Marshmallow’s release in early October, Motorola was the first to begin pushing out updates to compatible devices. The Moto X Pure Edition was one of the first to pick up the update, followed by other devices down the road.

Following closely behind, LG took the second spot with a limited LG G4 rollout. A little over a month later, the company continued that rollout to more devices. HTC closely followed LG except rather than pushing out the update over time, HTC quickly updated the majority of its devices over the course of just a couple of months.

This is where a line can be clearly seen. These three OEMs quickly began the process of rolling out updates, meanwhile, the remaining 3 took quite a bit longer. Following HTC’s updates, it took about two months for the next OEM, ZTE, to get started. Shortly after that, both Samsung and Sony got started, updating compatible devices within a couple of months.

The report further breaks down these OEMs by comparing crash rates. Here Sony and Motorola both fall under 0.1%, Sony taking the lowest with 0.08%. Following that HTC, LG, and Samsung all tie, more or less, at 0.1%. ZTE takes last place in this comparison at 0.28%.

Finally, the report looks at Android fragmentation around the world. Across the entire Android market, this report reveals that Russia has the worst fragmentation. In this region 230 different smartphone models make up 90% of the market, with the top 10 devices taking up just 27% of the market. Of those top 10 devices, none use Android 6.0, some even going as far back as Android 4.3.

By comparison, the top device in the United States is the Galaxy S5 which takes up 12% fo the market. Here the top 10 devices on the market also make up 44%. This results in far less fragmentation compared to Russia. While this won’t impact the average consumer on a daily level, it doesn’t make app development easy for these regions as developers will be forced to spend more time to ensure their apps work with the various devices and Android versions in the target market.

So what does all this mean? It really confirms what we already know. The Android platform has a problem. OEMs aren’t quick enough with updates and fragmentation is still a big problem. That said, things are definitely getting better.