The current state of affairs is that the mobile market is beginning to look very fragmented.
If you look at what is the most popular and fastest growing smartphone platform right now; Android – It is getting increasingly harder to create applications and websites that will function optimally on all devices.
In November there was registered 172 unique SKU’s for Android devices. A SKU is an unique identification ID for tradable/stock goods items. There is being released about four of five new Android based devices every month! So, going further and you take a look at the Android devices listed on Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Android_devices) you see screen sizes and resolutions that range from 2,5 inch to 10,1 inch screens, in between there you have screen sizes in 2,55”, 2,8”, 3,0”, 3,1”, 3,2”, 3,4”, 3,5”, 3,7”, 4,0”, 4,1″ and 10,1 inches. Screen resolution ranges from 320×240 pixels to 480×800 pixels and a wide range of screen technology from SuperLCD, AMOLED, HVGA, nHD, WQVGA. And that’s just the smartphones. The new tablet computers comes with both capacitive and resistive screens that range from 4,3 inch to 10,1 inches and a varying resolution of 800×480 pixels to 1366×668 pixels.
You will not be able to develop an optimal solution for all of these devises within the Android platform itself, and don’t think it will be any easier when you cross the device platform barrier.
In my opinion the Android device market more and more resembles how you thought about web design in the early 2000. There was too many browser that displayed the same things differently. Something that became a pain for most developers and resulted in badges width “Designed/Optimized for Firefox/Netscape/Internet Explorer/Opera” stamped on them.
I do hope that Microsoft and Apple be a bit more strict on their requirements. We don’t want to repeat the browser/screen horror of Y2K.
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Developer device fragmentation alert
Commentary | December 8, 2010 by Alexander Viken
The current state of affairs is that the mobile market is beginning to look very fragmented.
If you look at what is the most popular and fastest growing smartphone platform right now; Android – It is getting increasingly harder to create applications and websites that will function optimally on all devices.
In November there was registered 172 unique SKU’s for Android devices. A SKU is an unique identification ID for tradable/stock goods items. There is being released about four of five new Android based devices every month! So, going further and you take a look at the Android devices listed on Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Android_devices) you see screen sizes and resolutions that range from 2,5 inch to 10,1 inch screens, in between there you have screen sizes in 2,55”, 2,8”, 3,0”, 3,1”, 3,2”, 3,4”, 3,5”, 3,7”, 4,0”, 4,1″ and 10,1 inches. Screen resolution ranges from 320×240 pixels to 480×800 pixels and a wide range of screen technology from SuperLCD, AMOLED, HVGA, nHD, WQVGA. And that’s just the smartphones. The new tablet computers comes with both capacitive and resistive screens that range from 4,3 inch to 10,1 inches and a varying resolution of 800×480 pixels to 1366×668 pixels.
You will not be able to develop an optimal solution for all of these devises within the Android platform itself, and don’t think it will be any easier when you cross the device platform barrier.
In my opinion the Android device market more and more resembles how you thought about web design in the early 2000. There was too many browser that displayed the same things differently. Something that became a pain for most developers and resulted in badges width “Designed/Optimized for Firefox/Netscape/Internet Explorer/Opera” stamped on them.
I do hope that Microsoft and Apple be a bit more strict on their requirements. We don’t want to repeat the browser/screen horror of Y2K.
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Tags: android, apple, developer, devices, fragmentation, Google, Microsoft, mobile, SKU, smartphone, software