According to a new report by the Los Angeles Times, Android fragmentation problem is getting better. As of Monday, Jelly Beans – the latest Android version, is used by 37.9% of Andordi users, while Gingerbread accounts for 34.1%.
“The stats are shown in Google’s developer dashboard and are determined by the Android devices that visit the Google Play digital store in the previous two weeks,” according to the report.
“Jelly Bean becoming the most used version of Android is a welcome sign for Google, which set out to fix the amount of fragmentation in its mobile platform when it rolled out Jelly Bean last summer,” Salvador Rodriguez writes for the LA Times. “Because Android is used on hundreds of different types of smartphones and tablets, Google has always had a hard time getting the bulk of its users onto the same version of the platform. Instead, all users are scattered about on several types of Android.”
“This is a problem for Google, as it makes it harder and slower for developers to create Android apps,” Salvador Rodriguez explains. “Unlike for the iPhone, developers cannot simply make one version of their app for Android but rather must take extra time to make sure their app works on the various versions of the platform that are still in heavy usage.”