The state of Android http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-state-of-android-2015-6?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Falleyinsider%2Fsilicon_alley_insider+%28Silicon+Alley+Insider%29

Hmmm.... 80% of consumers 'where', I wonder... Just got back from the Philippines where 'everyone' has a phone. Almost all of them are old Nokia types (not smartphones) and those that did have a smartphone, they were almost all Android. Only a few iPhones, and very few 'recent' iPhones at that; a bunch of 4s and a few 5s, I don't recall seeing a 6. Granted, in the US or other nation where a cellphone contract comes with a reasonably priced smartphone (until you look at the total cost, lol! but the initial outlay is reasonable) it's about even for an iPhone or an Android (almost always Samsung, but not exclusively) so competition is fierce. But in the land of 'out of pocket' I think Android still has a lot going for it. I recently bought another Android phone for testing (a BLU Studio C Mini) for about a hundred bucks. It has almost the latest Android everything. So, if you're up for contract, maybe. If not, it really depends on your wallet size, and the 'average' wallet size doesn't want to pony up $500 or more dollars for an Apple OR a Samsung... Just my 2¢ Cheers! -- Smug

Great breakdown buddy, agreed.

Interesting article Keith. Although, I have to admit it sounded a bit like it was written by a FanBoy :) I don't think those two comments which were tweet-style seem to say much of anything. Perhaps there's more to it in the linked article, but I don't have a subscription to FT.com :) I think what's interesting to see is a maturing of the industry - Apple and Android are evening out in terms of their market share, and Windows is, well, exactly where we all predicted it would be. lol. In my opinion, the biggest concern for Android is not the market share but the adoption rate of the latest software. They just announced Android 6.0 last week, and yet 5.0 still makes up less than 10% of devices. Considering how big of a change 5.0 was in terms of design that's really disappointing.

>the adoption rate of the latest software Exactly, the avalanche of new versions of Android just confuses everybody and the hardware companies do not even try to install the latest version of Android. Add to that the compatibility mode, which should enable the most modern version of Android to execute on old devices and you get a complete mess. You need to support no less than eight former versions of Android if you really want to be compatible and that's a Herculean task. My app Opera Music has more than 320,000 downloads from Google Play but Samsung will not even let it into their own store because it is not compatible with three of their gamut of devices. Fragmentation is a problem indeed.