When asked about the phenomenon of Android’s perceived fragmentation at this year’s CES, clown prince of comedy Eric Schmidt responded that Android isn’t a “fragmented” platform, it’s a “differentiated” one. You say “tomato”, I say “hodgepodge shitshow”. Everything with Schmidt is a matter of perspective, which is why I imagine he has such an interest in politics.

To illustrate how broken…err…differentiated the Android ecosystem is, the folks at OpenSignalMaps put together some interesting illustrations of how many different Android devices exist using data pulled from 6 months of device logging. The answer: 3,997. In other words:

This is not a Grand Perspective view of my hard drive

You’d think that having to write apps for so many devices, OS versions, screen sizes and screen resolutions would be a daunting task for developers, but the folks at OpenSignalMaps have a Schmidtism for that:

One of the joys of developing for Android is you have no idea who’ll end up using your app.

I’m sure the small-time developer shares this sentiment. They’re not in it for the money, after all.