Droidcon Day 1: Fragmentation of Android Market, opportunity or problem?

The first day at Droidcon was a barcamp in which the community proposed talks and presentations were free-styled. There were some common themes that emerged, here's one of them.

Fragmentation of Android Market. An opportunity for developers?
There isn't one Android Market anymore. One of the most noticeable things at Droidcon was the amount of new app stores that are opening up on the Android platform. Vodafone Developer Platform and Orange App Store were both using the event to build awareness of their new markets for applications. I tested Samsung Galaxy S on the Orange stand which had no less than three app stores on the device, Android Market, Samsung Apps and Orange App store.

How should I feel about this?


Worried
Fragmenting the app stores will confuse consumers. One Android Market presents a clear message to the public. Apple understands why this is important and tells a consistent story to people about its products. Android unfortunately does not. This will just lead to more confusion.

People don't want to have to hunt around in different stores for different apps. Imagine if Angry Birds was only available in the Orange App Store and non-Orange customers couldn't download it? This is a nightmare senario for Android.

Submission rules. Mobile operators aren't as relaxed as Google about the apps that are uploaded to their stores. Android's famed openness will challenged if app censorship becomes commonplace in third party app stores.


Optimistic
Operator billing for paid apps. Both Vodafone and Orange will provide on-click purchasing of apps in their stores, with the payments appearing in the phone owner's next bill. This is a brilliant feature and something Google should be doing in Android Market. It's fantastic to see a serious barrier to consumers paying for apps being addressed, which will give developers the chance to earn more money from Android.

The operators will pay the tax for you. Again, this removes a serious barrier for large content and media companies from developing apps for Android, who just can't ignore the payment of taxes within different territories.

New opportunities for promotion. There's no question that Vodafone and Orange reach a lot of customers. The chance to have your app featured in their stores will be enticing to app developers.

Growth of Android. If operators are seriously committing to Android in this way, it can only be good for the platform's growth. Mobile operators will want to earn money from their app stores, so will advertise the Android devices that can host their stores. This will lead to increased Android phone sales, which can only be a good thing.

Aggregate the stores
Google could turn all of these new stores into something really powerful if they used Android Market as an app aggregator. Apps from Orange, Vodafone and Samsung stores would be visible within Android Market, but clearly branded as being from the third party partner.  Users would download the app from the third party store. Both sides would get the benefits from promotion and more apps being available.  If users were able to browser through all available Android apps within Android Market this would also solve all of the concerns about fragmentation.