The downside to fragmentation (1 Viewer)

[Sam Posten]

I wear many hats and have no individual tech stocks other than $200 worth of Facebook bought on a whim when it tanked post IPO.

I prefer to think of it looking at the industry holistically rather than with just the eyes from one point of view.

Let me reframe the discussion: If one Android player is sucking all of the profits from the game what incentive is there for other players to continue in this market? What does it do to Android's putative strength (the vast number of choices available) when all of a sudden Samsung becomes the defacto standard and the only relevant manufacturer? You have then substituted one monolith for another.

 

[Sam Posten]

And yes, I completely realize the hypocrisy of me asking that question, given my public stance on the dubious nature of fragmentation as a core strength. I'm not saying one strong Android vendor is better than a cadre of oddball choices with their own strengths and weaknesses although clearly I like the way it is working for Apple.

Without trying to be clever, I'm just wondering if Samsung as monolith makes my point for me re: fragmentation not living up to the open promise. Whether its better or not for the ecosystem for one player to be dominant is yet to be seen. And in this case what is best for one stakeholder, the users, may not be the best for another stakeholder, every vendor besides Samsung. Fascinating really.

 

[RobertR]

If one Android player is sucking all of the profits from the game what incentive is there for other players to continue in this market?

One might have asked the same question when Apple dominated the smartphone market (a dominance that didn't seem to bother you, BTW). The answer is simple, really: Markets are dynamic, not static. A dominant player today is anything but guaranteed to be dominant tomorrow (history is replete with such examples). The only way Samsung can stay dominant is to make great phones that people want more than phones from other companies. As I said, there is ZERO guarantee that this will be the case in the future. Companies busting their asses to make great products (which is the POINT of being in business, not profit percentages) while nervously looking over their shoulders at the competition is what we want, and it makes no sense to wring our hands over how successful they are at making those products.

 

[Hanson]

Samsung's dominance is not an Android issue. Android here is an incidental platform. Marketing, production capacity, and wide distribution are the main reasons why they're so dominant (and yes, it helped that they made a great product). No one outside of Apple has this kind of leverage, and frankly, that should scare the shit out of Google. The only thing stopping Samsung at this point is the lack of an extensive app store for their own OS. We'll see how this develops.

 

[Sam Posten]

One might have asked the same question when Apple dominated the smartphone market (a dominance that didn't seem to bother you, BTW).

Of course it didn't bother me. The whole proposition of a monolithic walled garden is you control every aspect. At best you are benign dictator but you are still a dictator. The promise of Android was that vendors and users would be free from this tyranny, and as we have seen the side effect of this freedom is fragmentation. With Samsung eating the vast majority of the android milkshake's profits the question becomes will vendors continue to push forward to perpetuate this freedom when they are fighting for scraps. That's the full circle of where we have come to. (Tho not to mention the Android forks, those are obviously a different debate)

I don't know how many times I have to say it but I have more android devices than I do iOS ones and I continue to be interested in BOTH SIDES further development as incentives for them to push each other forward. I don't know how that continues to get twisted as me being a iOS fanboy but whatever. Fragmentation is clearly still a big issue for Google and their engineers have some smart things to say on the subject:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57584973-93/google-engineers-were-trying-to-fix-android-fragmentation/

"This is something we think about a lot," said Dave Burke, engineering director for the Android platform. "And we're working internally to streamline the development process and make the software more layered."
Fragmentation has been a major problem for Google Android almost since the beginning as the company quickly rolled out one software release after another. Device makers and the wireless operators that sell smartphones and tablets to consumers haven't been able to keep up. This means it can take several months for some devices to get new updates, and others don't get new software refreshes at all.
As result, there are millions of devices still running Android 2.2 Froyo and 2.3 Gingerbread. Google initially introduced those versions in May and December 2010, and Google has significantly altered Android programming interfaces since then.
...

For instance, he said that the reason many Android devices in emerging markets use older versions of Gingerbread is because of the hardware limitations such as memory. Android itself doesn't require more, but applications are getting richer and do, he said. As a result, many apps developed for the newest version of Android can't run on old devices.
"We're trying to make Android more efficient so that even entry-level smartphones can use the software," he said.

I'm on record as saying that parts of JB still feel sluggish to me on my Nexus 7, something for which I've been laughed at. Apparently Google feels that there is still much to be done here:

The engineers also acknowledged they are still working to refine Android to fix certain issues. Android is still too often "janky," meaning that changes on the screen stutter or pause instead of moving smoothly. To help fix that, Google said it's continuing work on Project Butter, an effort that arrived in Android 4.0 that designed to make the user interface work more smoothly.
"We made a lot of progress in Jelly Bean, but we have a lot more to do," Burke said. He said developers need to test on lower-end phones, not just powerful ones. "With a Nexus 4, you're spoiled by the power of GPU. You need to test on mulitple levels of devices."

Sic.

 

[RobertR]

Of course it didn't bother me. The whole proposition of a monolithic walled garden is you control every aspect. At best you are benign dictator but you are still a dictator. The promise of Android was that vendors and users would be free from this tyranny, and as we have seen the side effect of this freedom is fragmentation. With Samsung eating the vast majority of the android milkshake's profits the question becomes will vendors continue to push forward to perpetuate this freedom when they are fighting for scraps.

This quote illustrates what I'm talking about. You said "of course it didn't bother you" for Apple to "control every aspect" while Android had to "fight for scraps" to "perpetuate freedom", but it does bother you that Samsung is in a dominant market position, not because it's "dictating" anything, but simply because it's making phones that people like. I can't figure you out. You complain that Android is "too fragmented", then you complain that one Android manufacturer is "too dominant".

 

[Sam Posten]

Here's what you aren't seeing, and I don't know where the disconnect is. I am not complaining about anything. I am trying to make sense of a complex situation. I start with my personal observations and compare to what mass media, other users, and the companies involved. I don't have an agenda.

I have been following Android since their first announcement. the freedom angle was very prominent back then and obviously is not now. It was directly put that way as an alternative to the walled garden.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/wheres-my-gphone.html

 

[RobertR]

I have been following Android since their first announcement. the freedom angle was very prominent back then and obviously is not now.

Given the "pure, unlocked" version of the SGS4 that's been announced, I think it is prominent. The phone isn't tied to one carrier, nor does it have carrier software (does Apple sell such a phone?). Sounds pretty free to me. Regarding your complaints about Android fragmentation (your protests that they're only "observations" notwithstanding), I saw this post on Android Central:

Google is moving the API's for all of it's core services like Now, Hangouts, Gmail, Search, Maps, Music, Play Store, and others I'm forgetting to mention out of the OS and into Google Play Services. So rather than having to update the OS itself to change how those all interact with the OS, they simply have to update the services themselves which will get pushed to your phone from Google, and not through Samsung (or other makers) or your carrier….

It's a brilliant idea because it helps take some of the pain out of the android fragmentation criticisms. All phones can benefit from this new development at the same time now regardless of who they're made by or who your carrier is.

 

[Sam Posten]

That IS cool, thanks for the heads up on that. I've seen developers calling on Apple to do similar things, we'll see how that pans out. I do agree that having core app functionality be replaceable would be consumer positive.

Back on the downside of fragmentation, looks like HTC is feeling the pain, Samsung dominance is listed as a key factor by Verge at least:
http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/21/4352838/htc-in-disarray-kouji-kodera-staff-departures-disastrous-first-and-production-problems

 

[Sam Posten]

More on market share versus profits:
http://techpinions.com/androids-market-share-is-literally-a-joke/16709

I think the author is trying to twist android fans into rage a bit, but the math quizzes are interesting.

 

[Hanson]

I don't think he knows what "literally" means.

 

[Sam Posten]

I don't think he knows what "literally" means.

I think it's grammatically right in this case. He is saying that not only is it figuratively the same thing, born of the same concept but that someone on twitter used that figurative allusion and made it literally the end of the joke. Again I think his use of pejoratives is rude but again I think it's an interesting way of looking at "winning" which I know some of you disagree with. Lets just take the two main questions and handle them outside the article:

Question: Company A has 25% market share. Company Z has 75% market share. Which company is doing better?

Question: Company A has 25% market share and 75% profit share. Company Z has 75% market share and 25% profit share. Which company is doing better?

Question: Company A has 25% market share and 50% profit share. Company Z has 75% market share and 50% profit share. Which company is doing better?

 

[Sam Posten]

Harry McCracken agrees with you guys, figuring out who is winning is dumb:
http://techland.time.com/2013/05/24/if-youre-obsessed-with-winning-you-dont-understand-the-mobile-market/#ixzz2UDFLMoU7

And I'm OK with that. But then I see completely hairbrained stuff like this and just have to say "no".

http://www.businessinsider.com/apples-incredible-profits-and-small-market-share-2013-5

To say I disagree with Yarrow is an understatement. You can get an iPhone, maybe not the latest and greatest, for zero dollars. If you care to get a better one you can do so if its of value to you.

For Apple to go deeper than that and build less functional phones just to get market share, something everyone else is doing and losing money, devaluing their premium product seems to be pure lunacy to me.

 

[Sam Posten]

Why Apple hasn't fragmented the iPhone market:
http://www.asymco.com/2013/05/29/tim-cooks-answer-to-my-first-question/#comment-912533028

 

[Hanson]

That confirms my belief that the sole reason there is no >4" iPhone is because they are locked into "retina screen" ppi while iOS can only increase resolution by integers. So either they have to create an insane screen resolution or overahaul iOS to scale resolutions like Android. The increase to 4" was only an increase of height, which allowed them to retain the same ppi.

 

[DaveF]

That confirms my belief that the sole reason there is no >4" iPhone is because they are locked into "retina screen" ppi while iOS can only increase resolution by integers. So either they have to create an insane screen resolution or overahaul iOS to scale resolutions like Android. The increase to 4" was only an increase of height, which allowed them to retain the same ppi.

They increased the screen height by 18% to get 1136 x 640
Conceivably, they could go to 4.4" with a 25% increase, 1200x800.
They could go to 5.3" with a 50% increase, 1440 x 960

I don't know that they should or will. But I don't think these qualify as "insane" when the iPad 2048 x 1536 with essentially the same hardware

 

[Sam Posten]

Via DF, the BBC on Fragmentation:
http://blogs.computerworld.com/android/22269/android-fragmented-and-costly-says-bbc-it-denies-apple-bias

 

[Hanson]

They increased the screen height by 18% to get 1136 x 640
Conceivably, they could go to 4.4" with a 25% increase, 1200x800.
They could go to 5.3" with a 50% increase, 1440 x 960

I don't know that they should or will. But I don't think these qualify as "insane" when the iPad 2048 x 1536 with essentially the same hardware

They can't do 1200 X 800 unless they go to a third resolution platform. That would mean it would need its own native apps. iOS can only scale in multiple integers. That's why the original Retina screen was 640 X 960, which was double height and width. They simply added more pixels to the top for the iPhone 5. If they want to stay over 320ppi and move up in screen size, it would have to go to 1704 * 960. At the time I did the math, that seemed like excessively high ppi, but compared to the 1080p screens, it's actually lower ppi, even at 4.5".

 

[DaveF]

Yes. It would be more pixels, larger screen and exact same density. It's what I expected them to have done for the 5, instead of making it only taller. They didn't, so maybe it comes along for iPhone 6 in a year.

 

[Sam Posten]

Interesting conclusions, parallel my own, not universally shared here tho....

An obvious question that arises when looking at the charts above is why app usage shares don’t follow device shares. We think there are at least three possible explanations.

One is that at least up until now the two dominant operating systems have tended to attract different types of users. Once Apple established the app ecosystem many of the consumers who purchased iOS devices were doing so to be able to run apps on those devices. They were buying a computer that fit in their pocket or purse. In contrast, many Android devices were provided free by carriers to contract customers upgrading feature phones. To the extent that those customers were just buying replacement phones, apps may be a nice add-on, but not a central feature of the device.

A second possible reason for why Android’s share of the app market lags its share in the device market is that the fragmented nature of the Android ecosystem creates greater obstacles to app development and therefore limits availability of app content. Hundreds of different device models produced by many manufacturers run the Android operating system. App developers not only need to ensure that their apps display and function well on all of those devices, but they also need to contend with the fact that most devices are running an old version of Android because the processes for pushing Android updates out to the installed base of Android devices are not nearly as efficient as those for pushing iOS updates to iOS device owners.

The final possible explanation for the differences in device and app usage shares relates to the first two. It is that the arguably larger and richer ecosystem of apps that exists for iOS feeds on itself. iOS device owners use apps so developers create apps for iOS users and that in turn generates positive experiences, word-of-mouth, and further increases in app use.

http://blog.flurry.com/bid/97860/The-iOS-and-Android-Two-Horse-Race-A-Deeper-Look-into-Market-Share