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Report: Android device fragmentation has increased 28% over last year

Android is notorious in the developer community for its rampant fragmentation. Developing an app for Google’s platform means wrestling to make the app work optimally on the ecosystem of thousands of devices in different shapes and sizes. And according to a new report out today giving us a look at the state of Android fragmentation as of this month, August 2015, there’s both some bad and good news: There are more devices than ever before, but fewer users that are spread out across different operating system versions.


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There are almost 19,000 distinct Android-running devices in the wild

There’s always been much debate over whether or not the intense fragmentation of the Android ecosystem is a good thing, but I think the latest Android fragmentation report from OpenSignal puts it best: “Fragmentation is both a strength and weakness of the Android ecosystem, a headache for developers that also provides the basis for Android’s global reach.” This report gives us a great look at where Android stands as a platform, does a bit of comparing it to iOS, and visualizes (not so?) neatly how fragmented Google’s mobile operating system truly is.


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Android fragmentation a thing of the past: Gingerbread OS runs 73 percent of Android devices

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Analytics firm Localytics released a study today depicting Android fragmentation as a not-so serious issue in recent times.

Fragmentation is the inability to develop an application against a singular reference and achieve its intended behavior throughout all devices or operating systems suitable for the application. Localytics pinpointed Android’s succession to a couple operating systems, screen sizes, and display resolutions as the primary factors contributing to the removal of fragmentation among handheld devices and tablets…


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Google releases multiple APK support to cope with Android fragmentation

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To cope with fragmentation of their Android OS, Google has revealed on the Android Developers Blog they are now allowing multiple APK support. Historically, Google only allowed one APK file that would in some cases work on only a number of phones.

With multiple APKs, Developers can now build their apps for different screen sizes, processors, and other hardware capabilities. When a user downloads an app from the Market, they will be automatically assigned the APK that best matches their phone. On the Market all of the versions of the app will be aggregated into one for ratings, reviews, and listing. Google notes what devs need to know:

To support this new capability, we’ve updated the Developer Console to include controls for uploading and managing APKs in a product listing — we encourage you to take a look. If you’d like to learn more about how multiple APK support works, please read the developer documentation. As always, please feel free to give us feedback on the feature through the Market Help Center.
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