Android dissected

Over the past 6 months we’ve been logging the new devices that download OpenSignalMaps, we’ve based this study on 681,900 of these devices. We’ve looked at model, brand, API level (i.e. the version of Android) and screen size and we’ve tried to present this in the clearest form we can

…

We’ve spotted 3997 distinct devices. It comes as no suprise that the GT-i1900 (the Galaxy SII) is the most popular - with 61,389 users downloading OSM in the last 6 months.

A very interesting analysis and graphs about the diverse universe of Android devices on the market today. According to this study Samsung has about 40% of the market, but there’s hundreds of other makers and even more HW variants. While such a wide variety may seem great from consumer’s perspective, it is a nightmare for developers and, as a result, detrimental for the consumer too as it is very difficult to support so many device variants in parallel and developers are forced to prioritise. In the better case, consumers therefore either have to wait longer for their device to be properly supported. In the worse case, their device will never get the app or the OS version they are waiting for as the incremental cost for the developer (or carrier in case of deploying new Android version) is just too high. Compare this with a way simpler iOS landscape…

❧