Android OS Fragmentation Issues Fading

Concerns about device fragmentation in the Android OS market seem to be dying down as increasing numbers of existing smartphone owners upgrade their OS to the latest versions. The number of handsets detected by the Android Market running the older versions 1.5 and 1.6 have now fallen below the 10% mark

Apple's Steve Jobs famously said that device and OS variances in the Android platform would be a problem for developers, although Motorola countered by saying that some limited fragmentation is actually a good thing as it offers consumer choice.

The Android OS is certainly quite good at internally managing the issues of differing screen sizes between handsets - a problem that bedeviled J2ME and MMS services.

Platform	API Level	Distribution
Android 1.5	3	3.0%
Android 1.6	4	4.8%
Android 2.1	7	29.0%
Android 2.2	8	61.3%
Android 2.3	9	0.7%
Android 2.3.3	10	1.0%
Android 3.0	11	0.2%

Data collected during two weeks ending on March 15, 2011