The Pros and Cons of Android Fragmentation

Carmen Delessio is CTO of Layercake, an NYC startup focused on helping parents to quickly and easily manage their photos and digital memories. Request a beta invite at GetLayercake.com. Carmen’s Kindle Fire and other apps can be found at BffMedia.com.

My $99 Logitech Revue was just upgraded to the latest version of Google TV. My “go to” tablet these days is Amazon’s $199 Kindle Fire. These are both Android devices and are examples of the platform’s recent fragmentation.

Android fragmentation highlights include:

5 OS versions on devices (Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, and Ice Cream Sandwich)
Devices in various sizes, from small phones to TVs
Device manufacturers branching their own versions of Android

Amazon’s Kindle Fire is an example of a device with a manufacturer’s custom version of Android. This splintering has caused real concern among developers.

Android fragmentation is most often compared to Apple’s closed ecosystem for iOS. Apple iPhone and iPad developers can deliver pixel-perfect apps and be assured the apps will just work. Android’s multiple sizes, OS versions and branching make that pixel-perfect delivery difficult for developers.

But there are some positives of Android fragmentation from a developer standpoint. Here’s a look at some of the pros and cons.

Pros for Developers

Kindle Fire is showing strong sales
Amazon has a dedicated market for the Kindle Fire
Developers can design for a specific device
Apps on TV are cool
Low penetration in the TV app market means it’s easier to get noticed
The Android compatibility package and “fragments” address the issue of OS fragmentation (more on this below)
New revenue models are available

Cons for Developers

Too many devices running different operating systems
Need multiple designs for your apps
Too many apps in the Android Market
In general, Android users pay for fewer apps
Android tablet sales are poor
Google TV has not enjoyed mainstream success yet
TV apps are new and unproven

App Markets

App markets are a key to platform and developer success. The Amazon Android market on the Kindle Fire is the first significant alternate Android market for consumers. There are other options out there, but Amazon puts together the device and the market and curates the apps. This is quite like Apple’s process. Though built on Android, the Kindle Fire is a device that lives in a closed ecosystem. With more than 4 million units sold, the Kindle Fire deserves developer attention.

Similarly, an app market has just recently appeared on Google TV. Sony devices received the app market in November 2011 and the Logitech Revue received the update in December. It is only now that a developer can see his Android apps in a TV market.

Kindle Fire

I believe in the numbers. Kindle Fire will be the most successful Android tablet in the foreseeable future. There are plenty of consumers out there who just use and trust Amazon. TV ads and the Amazon site will be their introduction to the tablet world.

The $199 price tag and focus on the device as a reader and video player make the Kindle Fire a consumer device worthy of attention regardless of lackluster reviews.

Amazon knows how to sell, and that is an opportunity for developers. We can hope that making a good app for this device will drive sales.

Google TV

Apps look great on TV. As a developer, it’s fun to see your app on a big screen, especially if you’re working with photos or videos.

The availability of a marketplace drives growth and consumer acceptance. The recent upgrade provides the first real opportunity to develop and market apps for a Google TV. There is a window of opportunity for developers to stand out from the crowd before media companies and others really get into the game.

Google TV provides the potential for new revenue models. Advertising on TV apps is an unknown, but showing an in-app ad on the big screen may be more compelling than a 40-pixel mobile banner. Promoting your own phone and tablet apps within a TV app is an idea that seems worth pursuing. It is common to have a free advertising supported app and a paid app, but maybe a free TV app and paid apps on all other platforms is the way to go. We can speculate quite a bit about apps for TV, but one thing is certainly true — you can’t take it with you.

Technical Solutions

Google has done a lot to address fragmentation. One of the few times I thought Google showed a sense of humor as a company was when they added a new feature called “Fragments” to the Android Honeycomb release. Fragments provide the ability to create and reuse sections of the screen as UI components. In one app, a fragment may take up the full screen on a phone and just part of the screen on a tablet.

Google has provided a compatibility library that further addresses Android OS fragmentation. The library supports fragments and commonly used features for Android 1.6 to 3.x. A single code base can support Eclair through Ice Cream Sandwich.

Design and Targeting Devices

As screen sizes are factored in, the development task becomes design dependent. While Android provides great support for designs that work on multiple screen sizes, it can still be more challenging than the pixel-perfect closed iPhone system.

One option is to target a specific device. I’ll admit a guilty pleasure in developing an app just for the Kindle Fire. Based on the market size and technical spec, it seems worthwhile. Knowing that I could create and test an app on a single device and that it would look great on every Kindle Fire is very gratifying. It’s a small taste of how iPhone designers and developers must feel.

Google TV and Android tablet apps have a lot in common. Depending on your design, they may be exactly the same. Creating a TV app may lead you to releasing a tablet app because … you might as well.

Conclusions

A developer has the capability to create a single app for all devices using available technology. I suspect a common approach will be to use fragments and the compatibility library, which offer a significant amount of common code across a phone, Kindle Fire, and tablet/TV releases.

Having three or four products in the market may make more sense financially as well. An app called “Great App (Kindle Fire Edition)” may share 95 to 100% of the code with an app called “Great App (Google TV Version).” Rather than comparing that to iOS development, compare it to the work that web developers do to create websites that work well in five or six different browsers.

The opportunity to use newer Android versions and tools will help new developers get up to speed. The compatibly package and fragments will help those developers support multiple devices. The availability of Kindle Fire and Google TV offer two new markets for apps. Right now, the rewards for developing on new platforms for Android outweigh the risks.

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