Wired claims that the success of the Android mobile operating system is not necessarily a good thing. Android is fast becoming a major player in the mobile phone market, but developers are concerned that a slew of problems have made managing Android apps a "nightmare."

There are three versions of the OS (Android 1.5, 1.6 and 2.0), custom firmware on many phones, and hardware differences between different models, Wired said. This means that apps in the store could be buggy, might not work well depending on their handsets, and could deliver a "frustrating experience". It quotes developers as saying that bad reviews for apps which are screwed by the OS could be a lethal blow for small businesses, say developers.

Chris Fagan, co-founder at Froogloid, an Android focused application development company moaned that instead of working on updates to our apps, we find we are trying to make each app work for multiple versions of the OS and different hardware capabilities. The problem echoes similar concerns over Java in the 1990s which was not the cross-platform panacea it was originally conceived as.

Sean Galligan, vice president of business development at Flurry, a mobile app analytics company said that Android was growing very fast and there's a lot of excitement for it but it's also a lot for work, especially for medium and small developers. Apparently you can build an app that works perfectly with all three
firmwares, but then when you run it on carriers' ROMs it completely blows up.

The rest of the article seems focused on saying how wonderful the iPhone is because Apple has tightly controlled the introduction of new iPhones and updates to its operating system. The remaining paragraphs are how much better Apple has been at handling its applications.

While there might be problems with Android, the Wired article smells of being a pro-Apple spoiler. Apple has become increasingly worried about the rise of Android lately. It has been successful using an opposite Open Source philosophy to the controlled proprietary lifestyle touted by Jobs' Mob.

Have a look and see what you think here.