Android Fragmentation — the seemingly impossible conversation

The meaning of 'fragmentation' tends to mold to whatever the argument is, for good or bad

I'm sick of it, you're sick of it, everyone who knows much of anything about Android is sick of it. "Fragmentation" is a word that gets bandied about when it comes to Android more frequently than just about anything else. It turns out that an open source operating system installed on devices made by hundreds of manufacturers all over the world, many of which don't really care whether Google releases an update, creates an unstable ecosystem.

Who knew.

We all know the answer we want to see in response to suggestions that Android is too fragmented to be functionally compared to other platforms in the world today. It took a little while, but Google came up with an Answer. The almighty Google Play Services, a suite of apps and tools that glue multiple versions of Android together into a mostly similar experience that any manufacturer can have access to. All those manufacturers have to do is agree to play nice in Google's sandbox, and basically do whatever Google says.

And Google says that 93% of all Android devices that they monitor are using the most recent version of Google Play Services, which means even if those devices aren't using the most recent version of Android they have access to almost all of the new features Google has announced within the last year. And 93% isn't bad at all, right?

So what's the problem here?

source: androidcentral