Total number of Android-powered devices in the wild tops 4,000, says study

I have a theory about why Samsung had to make the Galaxy S3 look the way that it currently does, which is somewhat radically different from its sales record-breaking predecessor. They simply wanted a way to make it look different as a way to set it apart from most of the other Android phones that are flooding the market. Of course, Samsung can’t have a brick, and besides that would help them avoid having to deal with ridiculous lawsuits from the likes of Apple. Yet no matter what Samsung tries to pull in order to become a unique snowflake in this blizzard of Android-powered phones, it will ultimately prove to be in vain because as the graph above shows, there are simply far too many handheld robots in the open mobile kitchen.


According to numbers gathered by the company behind the OpenSignalMaps app, there are nearly 700,000 individuals using the said app on a total 3,997 different devices. Talk about platform fragmentation. Compare that to the handful of Windows Phone Mango devices in the market, or the single flagship iOS offering from Apple (although it should be noted that iOS can be installed just fine on old iPhone 3GS’s, still).

This type of thing normally doesn’t affect an end user, except when it’s time to update the software to the latest version, or when you want to check app compatibility from one device to another. This is the same type of problem that plagues Linux on the desktop. Where this will lead for devices in the smartphone market, no one knows. But one thing’s for sure, the total number of Android devices will only increase as this year’s weeks and months go by.