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OS Fragmentation is a Vendor-driven Feature, According to Google
Google CEO Eric Schmidt was widely quoted this week in news and blog dispatches from the CES as denying the existence of fragmentation within the Android OS community.
Instead, Schmidt suggests that what’s taken place is “differentiation.”
The fact of the matter is that the Android OS, as happens with any open source/community-developed software, has become fragmented. That fragmentation is very easily identified, and even quantified to some extent, by looking at the number of versions used by device makers within a single wireless carrier ecosystem. Just within my own household, we have three different Android phones, from three different makers, with three different Android versions – and none of them work the same way. That’s pretty obviously fragmentation, clearly demonstrated.
Even if we were to consider Mr. Schmidt’s statement to be factually correct, and agree that what has been happening is simply different developers and providers pursuing and/or tweaking various aspects of Android in order to differentiate themselves, we also have to consider that any successful, strategic “differentiation” by developers, device makers, or others within any software ecosystem must necessarily lead to fragmentation. By definition, “differentiation” means to make something different, and vendors/developers do so in order to stand out from others. Otherwise, differentiation would not be pursued.

