jgleman

Engaget reports Google is going to attempt to defragment the Android platform by separating their apps from the core OS and distributing OS updates via the Android Marketplace.

This is a good goal for Google (sorry for the alteration). Hopefully, for Android handsets going forward, it solves the problem. But as John Gruber notes:

Google has been iterating quickly, but the problem is that carriers aren’t interested in any updates at all for phones they’ve already sold. The carriers have learned nothing from the iPhone, or, maybe they just don’t care about Android as a platform.

So, in the end, OS version fragmentation may be less of a problem for Android users — two years from now. Current Android users, except for Nexus One owners, are shit out of luck. Hope you like Android 1.6 if that’s what your phone shipped with.

Google has a vested interest in keeping people on the Android platform. The carriers and handset makes have a vested interest in selling phones. Google wants to keep Android attractive and current for all Android users, even those with older phones. Carriers just want to sell new phones. Perhaps they don’t care if the software a phone ships with ever gets upgraded. To the carriers it doesn’t really matter if they sell a Blackberry, a Palm pre, an Android or a Windows Mobile phone.

Apple has interest in the OS and the hardware. They want to keep iPhone OS users on the iPhone OS platform and they want to sell iPhones. For Apple, this is really one goal.

Google has the Android Marketplace, Apple has the App Store, HTC has… to keep selling phones. It’s not that what is good for Google and Android is bad for T-Mobile or HTC, it just isn’t as important to them.