Google: Android fragmentation not ‘bad thing’

“”Everybody talks about fragmentation as a bad thing, but I
think you need to look at it from the perspective of the
developer,” Eric Chu, Google’s group manager for Android mobile
platforms, told the wireless-happy OpenMobileSummit in downtown San
Francisco this afternoon. “How much work does the developer have to
do to address the fragmentation? If there are a million devices and
they’re in three fragments, they don’t care.

“Chu says that although HTC and Motorola have tweaked the
Android UI on the Hero and Cliq devices respectively, the
underlying platform remains the same. “There are clear
opportunities for manufacturers and carriers to differentiate in
terms of the look and feel of the UI – the look and feel of the
device – while keeping the underlying platform consistent so that
developers don’t have to do anything different.”

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