A new set of leaked documents indicate that Google is taking a firm action to target fragmentation in 2014 and wants all Android smartphones releasing this year to run Android 4.4 KitKat.
According to a leaked memo, which is claimed to have been sent to at least one of the vendors, Google has revealed that it won’t be approving new Android products that run older platform.
“Starting February 2014, Google will no longer approve GMS distribution on new Android products that ship older platform releases”, reads the statement as reported by Mobile Bloom.
“Each platform release will have a “GMS approval window” that typically closes nine months after the next Android platform release is publicly available. (In other words, we all have nine months to get new products on the latest platform after its public release.)” the statement read further.
Samsung, HTC, LG, ZTE, Motorola and others who develop smartphones that have access to the Google Services Framework and Google Play Store would be required to run the most recent version of Android, claims the report.
Android KitKat has been developed such that it can run on low-end hardware with dual-core processors and 512MB RAM with one simple aim – solve fragmentation. If the leaked memo is indeed true, Google is indeed getting serious about the burgeoning fragmentation issue in the Android ecosystem.
