Dislocated wild horses: Android version of the messy industry chain

Computer shop news Half a year ago, the first galaxynexus equipped with Google Android 4.0 system Ice Cream Sandwich (ice cream sandwich) officially launched. Six months later, the main Android system vendors including HTC, Samsung, and Motorola were “not too slow” and slowly launched the 4.0 model. On May 3, Samsung officially released the third-generation galaxys model and equipped it with Android 4.0 system. Southern Reporter also learned from Motorola China that starting in May, Motorola will also launch a 4.0 upgrade of some existing models. As for HTC, it was only after this year's MWC conference that it was "on the horse" and Android 4.0 system. Since the nature is open source, the Android system has been developed to the present, almost completely out of Google's control. The new version of the system that is costly to develop is often used when mobile phone manufacturers need to add gimmicks for new products. What is more worrying is that the disorderly development status of the Android system version is now counter-attacking the entire Android industry chain. Fragmentation of rickets came in. Lin Jindong took the HTC ONE X handed over by colleagues and looked at it, "Take it to the R&D department." & rdquo; Then he smashed the cigarette butt in his hand, turned around and sighed at the reporter in Nandu, "It is more than 3,000 yuan (refer to the purchase of mobile phones). & rdquo; Lin Jindong is the founder of a local small and micro enterprise in Guangzhou. The business is the development and sales of application software on smartphones, spanning both Apple iOS and Google Android. He joked that a large number of Android smartphones on the market were bought by application developers like him, with the aim of making product adaptations. “When users install our software on their Android phones and find that they can't open, they only complain that our software has problems. This is true, but Google is also responsible. & rdquo; Lin Jindong said "Google responsibilities", refers to the phenomenon of the Android system in the open source state, the coexistence of various versions of the system. In addition, almost all mobile phone brands will make changes to the UI (interface) on the native Android system, and there are differences between different configurations of Android phones. “You have no reason for ordinary consumers to understand the difference, so we can only invest more resources, extending from the hot models to adapt as many Android models as possible. & rdquo; Lin Jindong said. As of the end of last year, the number of downloads of Android applications in the world has exceeded 10 billion times. According to the survey data of the quarterly monitoring of China Mobile Terminal Market in the fourth quarter of 2011, Android products accounted for 68.4% of total smartphone sales in China. . These figures mean that a huge market can naturally make application developers such as Lin Jindong want to stop, but the multi-version problem of Android  fragmentation" is getting worse. During the comparison between the two, many developers have fallen into a dilemma. On the Android developer's official website (developer.android.com), many developers also spoke out the similarities of Lin Jindong's "trouble", and some of them showed the emotion of "crazy". In their view, Google did spend a lot of thought and constantly upgraded the Android version. But what is worrying is that most of the new versions developed are seen by developers as “smooth”.

Uncontrolled Android is not only a developer, but also a mobile phone manufacturer. ——— even if the Android 4.0 system has been online for a long time, they still choose to be on their own new products. Equipped with Android 2.2 version Froyo (frozen yogurt) and 2.3 version Ginger-bread (Gingerbread). The same data from the developer's official website is currently using up to 63.2% of the 2.3 version and 23.1% of the 2.2 version. As for the 4.0 version, only 2.4%. In fact, no matter which version, it belongs to Google Android, and it does not have any impact on its official business model. Former Google CEO Eric · Eric Schmidt has said that Google has a very clear revenue model for Android from the beginning: giving Android to smartphone makers, making Google the default search, map and Email provider and generate revenue from advertising. According to this model, Google does not need to manage the official version of the user or "variant" Android, as long as the Google app is available. So as an open source software provider, Google has not had the desire and reason to control it from the beginning. However, the current situation is that the Android industry formed solely by market competition has made developers "not so comfortable". Some small developer apps that don't fit all Android models may not run or crash when they fall into the hands of users, resulting in a bad user experience. In addition, in the opinion of the consulting organization RationalAB analyst Zhang Xing, some of the problems that Google did not expect when creating the Android open source model have appeared one after another. The first is that mobile phone brands have upgraded their products to Android as they wish. Take the latest 4.0 system as an example, it is often only a gimmick of new products, and some new features are not publicized at all. The second directly affects Google's business model itself, "In some Android systems that have been changed by mobile phone manufacturers, you can't even find any Google-related applications." ” The chaos still has no solution. As a result, no company or organization, including Google, can control the multi-version of Android. This will undoubtedly allow Android to stand on the vertex of the smartphone market share, and only rely on objective share to maintain its position. However, from the traditional video game industry's Sega, Nintendo, Sony to mobile operating system Symbian, Windows Mobile, the electronic consumer industry has told us more than once, even if the share, adaptation software, games, applications are far ahead, never The representative is once and for all. Collapse may be just an instant. In March of this year, Mika Mobile, a famous foreign game developer, officially quit the Android platform software development through the official blog, because the cost accounted for 20%, but the profit was only 5%. Mika Mobile said that developers spend a lot of money to purchase a variety of Android phones, and a large part of the time is used to improve the shadow and texture material effects in the game for different display cores (referring to various configurations and versions of Android phones). Lin Jindong said that according to his understanding, there are not a few domestic developers who give up the Android platform, but they are far from the scale of Mika Mobile, so they have not been noticed. In addition to the developers of “Tangle”, the attitude of telecom operators to Android is also changing. For example, in the United States, which dominates the smartphone market, the number of iPhones sold by major US telecom operators has exceeded the sum of all other smartphones, and they are currently planning to sell Windows Phone. A domestic operator terminal company also revealed to the Southern Reporter that since the promotion of smart phones, the number of customers calling for customer service has increased due to mobile application problems, and most of the problems mentioned are from Android models. Android market share in each version of the platform Android2.3 (Gingerbread) 63.2% Android2.2 (frozen yogurt) 23.1% Android4.0 (ice cream sandwich) 2.4%