Apple’s marketing chief Phil Schiller launched a rare attack on Google and Samsung and the ‘fragmented’ Android operating system which he believes means that up to 50% of people with Android phones are on an operating system at least two years old.
He added that many new Android phones are shipped with an operating system at least one year old.
Apple has one phone, the iPhone, and new phones are shipped with the latest iOS. Android phones are supplied by a great number of manufacturers, each adding their own software or personal touches.
It has to be said that the comment by Schiller is not without foundation. I have an Android phone, a Sony Xperia 8. Not the newest model by any means, but neither is it direct from the Ark.
Already delivered with an out of date version of Android, it remains on Android 2.1 with no sign that Sony will ever upgrade the operating system. Other manufacturers are often very much the same.
The main drawback is that many of the newer apps, and some of the older ones, are not compatible, and this can be annoying in extremis.
Even Samsung’s newest flagship phone, the S4, which is due to be released tomorrow will more than likely not have the latest version of the Android operating system.