Fragmentation?

When I read about the fragmentation of devices on Android, I mentally nod, agreeing with the author of the article. When I see the thesis that device fragmentation interferes with software development, I raise my eyebrows. But when they try to prove to me that the fragmentation of Android is the main problem of this platform and the main disadvantage for mobile software developers, I, frankly, start laughing. Sorry, but this is either purely marketing deliberately nonsense, or a complete lack of understanding of the situation.

Imagine that you are a furniture manufacturer. You work in the market of furniture products, you compete with other manufacturers, dividing the entire market into certain parts. As an entrepreneur, your task is to grab as much of the radial angle as possible in a pie chart with the title “Furniture market share”. The pixels of this chart are people who buy furniture. They are different people and they buy different furniture: starting from unpainted cobbled beds from Ikea for 2000 rubles, and ending with sofas covered with leather of young crested crocodiles from the Caroline Islands, each of which stands as your apartment.

Each of these price segments has its own competition. You can make cheap furniture, sell it in cheap stores, do not even know about the existence of the Caroline Islands, and at the same time do not overlap with manufacturers of elite furniture, who also will not know about the existence of you. And this is completely normal. No one calls it fragmentation. This is called another word “segmentation” - market segmentation into different isolated market sectors, which, although they are part of the same type of product, depend on different sources of supply and demand.
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What do we have in today's mobile software market?

There is an Apple company that makes high-quality, top-end smartphones, which at the time of their release are always on the verge of fantasy. This is an elite segment. Yes, it is very large, even in absolute terms, but this is not the point, it is already changing now and will continue to change with time.

There is an Android. This is not a product in itself, but a platform for creating products. What are the smartphones on Android? There are the same powerful top units, flagships, the dream of every geek who buys everything that brings him closer to the ideals of the cyberpunk future. They (top units) compete with the iPhone and have approximately the same configuration. But, it so happened that on Android from the very beginning there are non-flagships. And it is precisely this circumstance from the moment of the start of the modern revolution of the smartphone race that doesn’t let people fall asleep for whom the word “fragmentation” seems like a terrible drawback. My friends, the fragmentation of the device market is a plus !

What do these strange people call fragmentation? Answer: the presence of different devices running on the same system, but with different parameters: resolution and screen density, power and number of cores, the presence of hardware features, the version of the system itself. The existence of several dozen of such combinations and strains some developers. Here's how for them, if for example to speak only about the screen resolution, looks like a comparison of iPhone and Android:




This is not true.

All of the above parameters in the aggregate determine the device in a certain sector of the smartphone market, position it on the scale of "megaflagman - budget phone". Drawing an analogy with our example of furniture, it is safe to say that in the case of smartphones, these sectors do not intersect in the same way, because real gadzhetomany only buy flagships, and those who buy budget smartphones do because of price considerations, therefore it’s unlikely whether they would have bought a smartphone at all if they were not in the market of their budget options.

In addition, the freedom of choice allows different manufacturers to produce their own various solutions, thus increasing the total absolute number of devices on the market, invest in marketing, and, accordingly, increase the total number of users.

Here’s how the diagram above should actually look like:



The iPhone circle turns into a packman - there simply aren't those various configurations, the absence of which provides a small degree of fragmentation. But there are no users who like the mouth of pakman, but do not like his carcass.

Hence the thesis number 1: the presence of various configuration options that allow you to make low-cost and simply different devices, expands the market, rather than crush it. More options - more people buy smartphones, more absolute values ​​on a pie chart. Yes, in return for more sectors on it.

Imagine a world that is perfect in terms of fragmentation, in which there is no separation in the android camp into different device configurations, and all Androids roughly represent competitors to the iPhone, that is, they are in the highest price segment. Then, let's say, we would have a line of different HTC Desire and Samsung Galaxy S with approximately the same basic configuration. There would be beauty, almost complete absence of fragmentation, significantly fewer sectors on the diagram. But there would not be cheap budget devices for 8 thousand, there would be no sliders, there would be no horizontal form factors: which means that the absolute values ​​of the number of users and devices would be less. Removing fragmentation, we just cut out the mouth of pacman, and do not smear the two largest sectors in a full circle.

Further. In fact, if it is physically unpleasant for you to have several subdirectories in the / res / directory, you can personally destroy any fragmentation. To do this, the Android Market has filtering mechanisms based on device features that are specifically designed for such lazy people.

Thesis number 2: Do not want to deal with fragmentation - do not fight. Do not want to make an interface for ldpi - do not. Do not want to support navigation without a touchscreen - do not support. In general, you can release the application exclusively for one device, and it will be one hundred percent lack of fragmentation!

All this concerns the fragmentation of the fundamental - when there are different screens, form factors and so on. There is also technical fragmentation - when the system is outdated and the system is not updated on some devices, different video chips, etc. It’s already quite realistic to fight against Google itself, which it is quite successful and does - at least a serious step has been taken to require all manufacturers to release a mandatory system update within 18 months from the moment the device was released. Technical fragmentation is minimized, and fundamental fragmentation is a plus for the developer.

You know, talking about the minuses of fragmentation is like if the furniture manufacturer started saying: “It's terrible, I can't live like this anymore, I have to think about how to make different sofas for the poor and the rich, and that terrible - I have to do not only sofas, but also chairs and double beds! What a terrible market. ” Dear, do not want to make double beds - do not do, and here the market?

Final Thesis # 3: Apple made the decision for you and got rid of fragmentation, simply by not releasing the class of devices that makes up the smallest part of the diagram and is needed by the smallest part of users. Android gives you the opportunity to make this decision independently, personally choosing the level of fragmentation for yourself. If iPhones had a fragmentation involving unused budget segments of the market at the moment - would the developer's profit be more or less? Of course, more. So then optional fragmentation as an opportunity to select different supported segments, maybe a minus?

Therefore, my friends, next time you will be told about how difficult it is to live in a fragmented android world, advise you to cut out your mouth android pakmanu and just look at the results.