"They're trying to knock the edges of the problem," Gottheil said.

But fragmentation contributes to the higher cost of making apps for Android, , meaning Google risks chasing its developers away if it does too little to address the problem.

"The danger there would be they get a reputation of having no decent apps, but I think they're kind of far away from that," Gottheil said.

Indeed, developers at the conference seemed to accept that fragmentation can be an occupational hazard of open-source development. They also noted that Google offers tools in its support libraries to help them work with the multiple versions of Android.