OpenSignal gives a look inside the state of Android fragmentation in 2015

BY Evan Selleck

Published 6 Aug 2015

OpenSignal Android fragmentation 2015

For the last few years, OpenSignal has put together a comprehensive look into the state of “Android fragmentation,” giving a look at what the Android platform looks like at a macro level.

That continues with the developer’s latest results, showcasing the current state of Android’s fragmentation in the year 2015. Some of the details that are revealed aren’t all that surprising, like Samsung’s dominance within the Android Army, or that there are a ton of new Android manufacturers across the globe, but it’s at least a good look at just one developer’s bird’s eye view of the platform as a whole.

This is the fourth year in a row that OpenSignal has published this type of report, and it’s put together from data the developer aggregates from devices that have installed the developer’s app.

The first point that OpenSignal identifies is the sheer number of devices out there. The 2015 report indicates a distinct 24,000 Android devices, up from the 12,000 distinct devices it reported in 2013. And, as for Samsung, the company’s dominance is still quite clear, as over 600,000 devices that were surveyed, Samsung owned 37.8% of them. While that’s impressive in its own right, that’s actually a step down from 2012, when the company held a total of 43 percent of the surveyed market.

Going down that line, there’s not a company that’s even close to Samsung at this point. OpenSignal indicates that Sony is probably second in line with 4.8 percent of phones, while everyone falls somewhere under that, including LG, Motorola and HTC. In China, however, Xiaomi has become the top brand, while Samsung is the runner-up in that region.

An interesting data point is the number of manufacturers that OpenSignal sees now: 1,294 of them, in fact. What’s more, OpenSignal says that over 1,000 of those weren’t even around in 2012 when the developer first started putting the report together. Of those new companies, OnePlus is one of them, which has without a doubt entered the Android Army with a presence all its own.

OpenSignal Android fragmentation2 2015

It’s also worth pointing out that a lot of the devices out there right now, as Google has even indicated in its Android distribution numbers for 2015, are running a relatively new version of Android. No, it’s not the newest, but with the majority of handsets still running Android 4.4, it’s a step in the right direction — even if the platform is still, technically, fragmented.

[via OpenSignal]