Wireless mapping company OpenSignal has released a report on the Android fragmentation (both a boon and a bane, according to the report), which states that Samsung has a 37.8% share in the Android market in 2014, down from 47.5% in 2012. This is because the rise of competing OEMs, showing 1,294 distinct manufacturers. Sony comes second with 4.8% market share, highlighting the grand gap between itself and Samsung, the dominant shareholder. OpenSignal says that it saw an increase in distinct devices downloading its app to 24,093, up from 18,796 last year and 11,868 in 2013, from where it gathered its data. It surveyed 682,000 devices for this report, the same number it has used for its 2013 and 2012 reports. It sourced the API Level Fragmentation Graphic from Google public data and the iOS API pie chart from Apple public data. iOS fragmentation limited to iOS 8 and iOS 7 The report states that although device and OS fragmentation in the Android ecosystem is high, there has been a slight reduction in the fragmentation in 2014, with the dominant and rising API version being KitKat. iOS, on the other hand, is fragmented only through iOS 8, which has an 85% market share, followed by iOS 7 which has 13% while the earlier version makes up 2% of the ecosystem. KitKat leads the share, the second being Jelly Bean 4.2 Android is highly fragmented with KitKat leading the share by 39.2%, Jelly Bean 4.2 by 17.5%, Jelly Bean 4.1 by 14.7%,…
