Published at LXer:

Fragmentation is often cited as a major challenge for the Linux platform and mobile software ecosystem. The word gets thrown around a lot and tends to be used as a catch-all phrase to describe a wide range of loosely connected issues. The rapid growth of the Android ecosystem and the significant number of new Android devices that are reaching the market with heavy software customizations has raised some questions about whether Google's Linux platform is going to succumb to the fragmentation menace. In this article, we'll take a look at what fragmentation means for mobile Linux and how Google's operating system addresses some of the biggest challenges.

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With so many hardware vendors offering Android phones, some fragmentation is going to be inevitable. Unless Google starts behaving a lot more like Apple, there isn't a lot they can do about it. Besides, what commentators are missing is that sometimes fragmentation can have a good outcome. It means people are trying new things and occasionally those new things turn into surprisingly useful new features.