Chris Cheung, product manager of at , thinks Google "... has to address the user experience of the Android Market, because it plays a large factor in consumer confidence and purchasing. Right now users have to rely on other ways of finding information," he adds, referring to third-party sites such as (Nvidia's site showcasing apps optimized for the Tegra2 processor).

Many other developers agree. Kayak's Bill O'Donnell says, "I think the Android market could stand a lot of improvements in a lot of ways. Its main problem is that it's one market for the whole world." For example, if you take a look at the Top Free apps in Transportation, you will note that most of the top apps are bus schedules/maps for Korea, the Czech Republic, and other international locales where Android is popular. While those apps may certainly be useful if you live in one of those parts of the world, it's doubtful that's what someone in St. Louis is looking for. Similarly, it's doubtful that someone using a Honeycomb tablet is searching for an app that isn't optimized for it and won't look good.

Many pundits have speculated that perhaps the holdup is in anticipation of Ice Cream Sandwich, which will theoretically merge Android's phone and tablet platforms, helping to end fragmentation, and which is due to arrive this fall. Why develop for one version of Android that will soon be enveloped by another?

To put it simply, none of the developers we spoke with indicated that the impending arrival of Ice Cream Sandwich is a factor. No one, it would seem, expects developing for Ice Cream Sandwich to be all that different from developing for Honeycomb. If it's going to be running on a tablet-sized screen, graphics will need to be scaled up, and the app will likely have to be redesigned for the new screen size. This is simply the difference between tablets and phones, not between Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich.