There are seven different Android OS versions in the world right now and Gingerbread still dominates the scene, despite the presence of two newer versions. We’ve covered this before and it’s fairly common (and easily attainable) knowledge in the development and QA world.

But just how bad is the fragmentation? What happens when a new version is released? Does the Android landscape get more fragmented with each new release or are older versions phasing themselves out? How quickly does a new version catch on? That’s what pxldot wanted to find out. Here are some of the findings pxldot came up with after taking a deeper look at Android fragmentation:

While it may be interesting to see how versions wax and wane over time, it’s a challenge to pin down exactly how “bad” the fragmentation is at any given time. In order to develop a model that measures this, we have to define what makes a particular version distribution better or worse than another. There’s no right or wrong way to do this, but the model I would propose is based on two tenets: the more handsets on the most recent version, and the less divided the remaining installed base (aside from those on the most recent version), the better. Using these two factors I built a formula that provides us with a value of how “bad” Android fragmentation is; it can theoretically go from 0–12.5, with higher numbers indicating “worse” fragmentation. …

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The iPad continues to dominate the tablet market and its sales are still increasing more quarter-over-quarter than Android tablets. But with the increasing number of Android tablets hitting the market and the popularity of the Kindle Fire, IDC projects that Android-based tablets will catch up and overtake iOS’ lead in the next four year. TechCrunch highlights some numbers from the new report:

While Apple will continue to be the single biggest tablet maker on the market, Android, collectively, will continue to hold its own against it, with some notable devices like the Amazon Kindle Fire doing particularly well. But it will not be until 2016 — four years from now — that IDC thinks that Android shipments will outnumber those of iOS.

Even though the Kindle Fire was available only in the U.S. in Q4, IDC says that the $199 device accounted for 16.8 percent of all tablet shipments in Q4 2011, or some 4.7 million units, making it the largest “Android” vendor. …

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The new iPad hits consumers’ hands today, which means you testers are going to be busy, busy, busy. As Jason Parker over at CNet pointed out, it’s going to take a lot of work to get existing apps ready for the iPad’s new super high res display. And the more developers need to tinker with their apps, the more you’ll have to test them. Here are the specific hangups (from CNet):

Crystal clear consequences
The new iPad has four times as many pixels as the iPad 2 (for a total of 3.1 million pixels), which makes for extremely sharp text and richer colors whether you’re reading a book, browsing photos, or playing a video game. While the iPad renders things like text for the sharper screen automatically, other parts of applications like textures and other art assets need to be redone to better utilize the extra pixels.

As a result, some applications have ballooned in size, which includes Apple’s own apps. … So in addition to the extra work for developers, users will see longer download times and they’ll have to consider the impact on their iPad’s available storage.

Apple’s apps and those games
Immediately after announcing the new iPad ,the company updated all of its iOS apps to take advantage of the new display. …

Though the company used the new iPad to demonstrate two updated games at last week’s unveiling event, it also said that the new versions of Infinity Blade: Dungeons, a hack-and-slash action RPG, and Namco’s Sky Gamblers, a dogfighting air combat game will not become available until later in the month. So even developers with early access are not quite ready for launch day either.

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We write a lot on the subject of mobile testing challenges specific to Android – with its countless devices, OS versions and other permutations. But for some reason, it means a lot more coming from a company like Netflix…

Amol Kher – the Netflix Engineering Manager in Tools for the Android, iOS and Apple TV teams – recently penned a terrific blog post on their first-hand experience testing their app on Android. I highly suggest that you read the post in its entirety, but here are a few of my favorite parts:

On their testing challenges:
“When Netflix decided to enter the Android ecosystem, we faced a daunting set of challenges: a) We wanted to release rapidly every 6-8 weeks, b) There were hundreds of Android devices of different shapes, versions, capacities and specifications which need to playback audio and video and c) We wanted to keep the team small and happy.”

On their testing team:
“We keep our team lean by focusing our full time employees on building solutions that scale and automation is a key part of this effort. When we do an international launch, we rely on crowd-sourcing test solutions like uTest to quickly verify network and latency performance.  This provides us real world insurance that all of our backend systems are working as expected. These approaches give our team time to watch their favorite movies to ensure that we have the best mobile streaming video solution in the industry.”

Read the rest >>>

Remember Google’s App Inventor, the DIY app creator open to the public? Well it recently underwent somewhat of a change…mostly in name only. Once the property of Google, App Inventor has now been taken over by the folks at MIT, according to Engadget.

Not familiar with App Inventor? Here’s an education/promotional video from Google circa 2010:

Not only is Apple’s App Store a bigger payday for developers than the Android Market, now a Distimo study is saying Amazon’s Appstore also earns devs a bigger haul. From Gigaom:

Investment in Amazon Appstore is paying off in a big way for many top developers, a good chunk of whom are pulling in more money for their apps on Amazon than through Google’s Android Market. App analytics firm Distimo, in its latest monthly report, laid out how despite its much smaller collection of apps,  the Appstore is becoming a lucrative place for app makers to do business.

Distimo said that of the top 110 apps that appear in both the  Android Market and Amazon Appstore, 42 of them make more money on Amazon than on Android Market. Overall, 28 percent of the revenue in those top apps came from the Appstore. …

Amazon Appstore is turning out to be a great place for paid app downloads, compared to Android Market which monetizes better through in-app purchase. …

While Android Market generated 22 times more new apps than the Appstore in September last year, by December and January, the number of new apps on Amazon had surged, cutting the Market’s advantage for new apps to about 5-1.

Read more …

The makers – and users – of Instagram are about to get a real-life lesson in cross-platform development. That’s because the popular iPhone application will be released in the Android marketplace “very soon.” This news was made public at SXSW in Austin, Texas. Here are the details via Wired.com:

In a fireside chat Sunday at South by Southwest Interactive, Kevin Systrom showed a glimpse of the upcoming version of the app, which is currently being tested in a private beta. Smartphone photogs who use Google’s mobile platform rejoiced.

The arrival of the new app will end months of frustration for photographers who carry Android devices and can’t participate in Instagram’s white-hot world of social photography. Instagram earned the honor of being Apple’s iPhone app of the year for 2011 and has quickly amassed a tight-knit community of smartphone photographers who enhance their square-shaped images with an array of retro-style filters.

Android phones provide a fundamentally different user experience than iPhones. For example, Android smartphones have either three or four permanent navigation buttons at the bottom of the screen, whereas the iPhone has a single home button, with all other navigation performed within various apps.

Read the rest here >>>

Of course, we’ll be keeping a close eye on the testing challenges that the Instagram team encounters. Should be interesting.

For the second year in a row, uTest will be making an appearance at SXSW, the world-famous music/film/interactive conference in Austin, Texas. Unlike last year – where we spent most of our time eating, drinking and schmoozing with storm troopers – we have some new, big plans in store.

The obvious difference is that we’ll be cruising around Austin in the RVIP Lounge, hitting up hotspots, giving rides, singing karaoke (poorly) and playing host to SXSW attendees throughout the week. More to come on that, but you can follow @InTheWildTest for deets on our adventures, and real-time locations if you’re at SXSW..

The other difference is that, instead of just talking about the merits of in-the-wild testing, we decided to show a real-world demonstration. So, over the last 36 hours, we assembled a select group of US-based testers to put the official SXSW mobile apps through their paces. In-the-wild testing means live testers, real devices, imperfect connectivity… basically, true real-world conditions. So we went to work testing SXSW’s official apps for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry. For iOS and Android, we also included tablet testing, to bring the comparison total to six.

Below are some top-level results (note that each category ranged from 1-5):

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% of Total Bugs	17.7%	18.3%	18%	6.6%	23%	16.4%
Overall Score	4.1	4.0	4.6	4.7	3.8	4.2
Usability & Design	4.2	4.1	4.6	4.8	4.1	4.2
Features & Functionality	4.1	4.1	4.7	4.7	3.2	3.9
Application & Performance	3.3	3.2	3.9	4.0	3.5	3.7

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Of course, these figures only tell part of the story. As the apps were tested in terms of functionality, performance, design, connectivity and other factors, several issues popped up on more than one occasion. Here were a few areas where some notable bugs were uncovered:

• Incorrect time displays
• Sync issues with registration and deleted items
• Crashes on various tablet OS versions
• Issues with installation
• Social media integration
• Issues with rating and uploading photos

It should be noted that despite these issues, the overall reaction from our community was positive for each of these applications. In fact, the overall ratings you see above are substantially higher than the industry norms, so kudos to the respective dev teams.

Anyway, if you’re at SXSW and want to learn more about In-The-Wild Testing, be sure to stop by the RVIP Lounge. If you’re not able to attend, then head on over to inthewildtesting.com.

It’s the end of the line for Windows Mobile 6.X, at least according to PCWorld.com. I’ve seen the way MSFT kills its products before (cough, IE6, cough) so I’ll believe this when I see it. Here are the details:

Microsoft is phasing out the app store for users of Windows Mobile 6.X, in an effort to push the last remaining users of the platform to the new Windows Phone 7. The company posted the official word Thursday that after May 9 no one can buy or download apps from the Windows Marketplace for Mobile 6.x app.

Microsoft launched the Windows Mobile 6.x Marketplace (not to be confused with the Windows Phone Marketplace for Windows Phone 7) in 2009 as a catch-up to Apple’s App Store, which at the time had some 35,000 applications (and now claims more than 550,000 apps). Microsoft abandoned the 6.X platform since in favor of the fresh Windows Phone 7, which has its own app store, separate from the old version.

Last Chance to Upgrade

The shut down of the Windows Mobile 6.x Marketplace on May 9 means users won’t be able to browse, buy or download directly from the app store app. You can still download apps from third party app stores or directly from developers’ websites, just not from Microsoft’s store.

Read the rest >>>

Since nearly half of Apple’s Top 100 all-time most downloaded apps were games (46 to be exact) it’s probably not surprising that gaming accounts for more than half of mobile sessions – and that percentage is growing. ReadWriteWeb reports on a study by Flurry:

According to Flurry, games accounted for 52% of mobile sessions in January and February 2012. Flurry sampled the data from 64 billion app sessions over 500 million devices. Game sessions are up 20.5 times over the same time period in 2010 and 15.2 times from this time last year.

“Independent” gaming studios are hauling in the most traffic. Flurry defines an independent gaming studio as; “independent game developers who started their businesses on iOS and Android versus established gaming companies who extended to iOS and Android from other platforms.” That would include the likes of Rovio (Angry Birds) and Toronto-based XMG Studios (Powder Monkeys) and not traditional game makers like EA Games and Zynga. Independent studios had 68% of game sessions in the first two months of 2012.

Read more at ReadWriteWeb >>>

Earlier this year a report came out stating that iOS users are bigger fans of game apps than Android users. With gaming accounting for a growing number of user sessions I wonder if it will even out.