In one of my earliest posts, I had described the cyclical nature of Android fragmentation, by measuring a few basic statistical properties exhibited by Android's version distribution. Let's take a look at the current state of fragmentation with the latest version distribution data.
First, let's take a look at the latest Android version distribution chart (as of 4th September, 2012):
The chart shows that ICS has replaced FroYo as the second most dominant Android version. The properties defining fragmentation measured and their interpretation were explained in my original post on fragmentation. Let's take a look at the current state of these properties:
The H-Index has also seen a drop over the last few months (a negative from a fragmentation perspective) thanks to the early launch of Jelly Bean. However, it has just dropped below 0.40 and is still within the "safe" range of 0.50 to 0.33 that I had defined previously. This should continue to drop until ICS penetration overtakes Gingerbread for the #1 spot and Jelly Bean overtakes FroYo to become the third largest Android version.
Update: Kurtosis, in the chart above, is invalid in this situation as the underlying assumption of normally distributed data has not been met. Thanks to Matthew Gardner for pointing this out.
