Android fragmentation report shows Samsung is still top dog

22 August, 2014

The guys at OpenSignal thrive on smartphone statistics and once agin they took the time to plot Android fragmentation. It was a mammoth undertaking as the dominant smartphone platform has splintered in many different ways.

First off is that Android devices are made by a myriad of manufacturers. Samsung was by far the biggest with 43% market share and 12 of the 13 most popular devices. Despite the domination, the company's market share has actually slipped, last year it had 47.5% of the market.

Sony comes in a distant second with 4.8% market share. There's a large number of old Sony devices out there, some dating from the Sony Ericsson days. LG and Motorola also have decently-sized shares. Huawei and Lenovo are doing okay too, keep in mind new Motorolas will soon be counted towards Lenovo's share.

The Galaxy S III and its versions is the most prolific device out there.

Devs have a huge challenge ahead of them – a couple of years ago OpenSignal counted 3,997 distinct Android devices, last year it was 11,868 and this year there are as many as 18,769 different types of Androids to worry about.

If a dev decides to support just the top 10 devices they'll cover 15% of the market, down from 21% last year.

Of course the different devices have to be multiplied by the different OS versions they run. The latest version, Android 4.4 KitKat, has around 21% market share. Compare that to 91% for iOS 7. Anyway, people living in countries with GDP per capita of over $20,000 were more likely to be running a KitKat than those living in sub-$20,000 countries. The market share of the long-outdated Gingerbread also shrinks in richer countries.

And when a developer finally gets an app working on a specific device running a specific OS they have to make sure it looks good too. Here's a representation of the different screen sizes of Android devices (left) compared to iOS (right).