The main problem of Android ecosystem is its huge fragmentation. For instance, during March, iOS 9 was installed on 79 percent of all supported devices; on the other side of the line, the newest version of Android (Marshmallow at that time) was installed on just 2.3 percent of Android devices, a bit lower and it would be counted as a statistical error.
And although fragmentation was the main problem from a start, it seems that situation won’t get better. All Android devices powered by Snapdragon 800/801 chipsets won’t get Android Nougat, ever. It’s not that manufacturers don’t want to bring the update, devices sporting Snapdragon 800/801 technically can’t run Nougat. Qualcomm, the manufacturer of Snapdragon chips decided to not upgrade graphic drivers of Adreno 330 GPU featured in 800/801 chipsets, thus disabling them for Nougat.
Now, this won’t be such a big deal if Snapdragon 800/801 weren’t Qualcomm’s flagship chipsets for 2013 and 2014, meaning that almost all flagship mobile devices had them. In other words, flagship devices, which should be supported at least two (or three) years, are technically unable to run Nougat, and that’s a huge problem for Android, and Google. If you bought a top-tier phone, and that phone isn’t able to run the new system released less than two years after the model was released, that mess could be a deciding factor when you decide to buy a new model. Most people will stay on Android, but those wanting to have the newest OS version could migrate to iOS. Why?
Well, because the new iOS 10 will support all iPhone devices back to iPhone 5, which got released way back in 2012. While Apple supports 4-year old device, Android owners should jump from joy if their two years old device receives a new OS version. And it’s not that those devices are affordable mid or low-tier devices, they are two-year-old flagships!
At this moment, almost 50 percent of all Android devices still use KitKat or an older Android version. Just to remind you, KitKat got released back in October 2013. If this problem doesn’t get solved, we might see a massive migration from Android to iOS in the future. Google should really do something about it.