Google suffers curse of diversity with Android

One of Apple's great advantages in the phone and tablet markets is the lack of choices it provides to customers. This may sound counterintuitive in our consumerist culture. But the Android mobile ecosystem, which is growing like crazy, has been, in some sense, burdened by its diversity.

Google, which owns Android and makes it available to device makers, is addressing one of the more serious issues in its part of the market: different devices of the mobile device operating system run different versions of the software. The tech world calls this "fragmentation". But even as Google is working to make the software part of the ecosystem less fragmented, buyers of Android devices are facing a similar issue with the hardware – and there's little or nothing Google can do to solve this problem.

Software fragmentation is a particular problem for Android phone users, who wait endlessly for updates to the operating system so they can run the latest apps. This contrasts in big ways with Apple's iOS mobile ecosystem. When Apple updates iOS, all reasonably recent iPhones and iPads get updated. Many powerful Android handsets – notably, Samsung's Galaxy S line that was a hit last year – are still waiting for the most recent Android version.

This software Babel also annoys app developers, who can't sell to the largest possible marketplace – and, as several questioners at Google's annual developers' conference noted Tuesday, means they have to write different versions of their apps instead of one.

Relief may be in sight. Google said Tuesday it was working with carriers and hardware makers such as HTC, Samsung, AT&T and Verizon (among others) to standardise Android across a wide variety of devices and networks.

Statements like this are easy. Creating a consistent platform is not, for a variety of reasons that include companies' wishes to differentiate what their devices and networks can offer. We'll see how seriously Google and its Android partners take this vow.

Even if they do mean it, they can't do much about the hardware fragmentation. Here, again, Apple is at an enormous advantage. The iPhone and iPad come in one size each, respectively, and they are selling in huge numbers. This means, for each model of these devices, makers of peripheral hardware – cases; docks for desks and cars; keyboards and much more – need only one design for the individual Apple products.

Contrast that with the Android marketplace, where there are dozens of phone models and, at long last, more and more different tablets. A peripheral manufacturer has to pick which devices it wants to support, come up with different designs and then manufacture for what are likely to be relatively small sales numbers for any single device. You can certainly find accessories and add-ons for Android tablets and phones, but not in nearly the iPad numbers or variety for any specific device.

This doesn't mean that Android tablet and phone makers should standardise on hardware. One of the best parts of the Android ecosystem is the wide experimentation. The more of that we see, the better-off the ecosystem will be in the long run.

For now, buyers of Android devices – tablets, in particular – should understand that they aren't going to have the rich variety of add-ons they can easily find if they buy iPads. This is especially true of newer Android tablets and phones, which are also the cutting edge.

Buyers of some Android devices also have something Apple steadfastly refuses to give them: the liberty to use their devices as they see fit. Apple's walled-garden approach is entirely about controlling the ecosystem. But while mobile carriers and their device-making partners have put some restrictions of their own on many Android devices, there's more freedom in the Android universe for developers and users alike.

The Android ecosystem is growing rapidly. But the device makers in the ecosystem are having loads of trouble competing with Apple's hardware ecosystem. That's unlikely to change anytime soon.