Apple’s marketing chief went on the offensive (click on link above for the Reuters article. Click here for the Wikipedia definition of Jive Talkin’). When I read the original interview in The Wall Street Journal, I thought “Well, Phil Schiller is right. Android is fragmented. But does that matter to me?” Having worked through a lot of Google naming conventions (Eclair, Gingerbread, Honeycomb) as we were starting Mobile Symmetry, I can say that fragmentation is an issue… But that issue is primarily for software developers, not customers. Have a read of the Reuters article for yourself by clicking on the link in the title. If the Samsung Galaxy S4 has a larger screen, better camera, NFC (not on the iPhone5), and creative commercials to market all of these, can Apple really make a marketing campaign out of operating system unity?
My other thought was that it’s kind of neat to get an Android update without having to get a whole new phone. I just got Android 4.1 on my Galaxy S3 and the fonts are clearer, the designs are better and I was delighted to get an improvement without having to shell out a dime. Maybe, in a very unique and devious way, fragmentation allows the customer to get a “present” in between hardware purchases.
I love Apple. I love the iPhone5. But the development community (particularly in India, where Apple is low double digit market share) is speaking and Apple is not listening. If India/ Asia is willing to put up with fragmentation, should Apple be surprised that Android is gaining mind share?