Verizon App Woes, Fragmentation Now Reality

I think we all knew that fragmentation was inevitable.

Concerns regarding fragmentation and comparability arose today when Telenav announced that they were essentially forced to reinvent their GPS application because it was not compatible with the Verizon iPh0ne 4.  The new iteration of their application is not backwards compatible with AT&T iPhones, so each individual app will have to be developed and managed seperately.

Telenav makes the AT&T Navigator app for the original iPhone, and has released Telenav GPS for the Verizon iPhone only. The navigation app is similar to the original Navigator app for the AT&T iPhone, but works on the Verizon handset only.

The Verizon iPhone required modifications to the Telenav app to make it work with the new hardware in the handset. The company did not elaborate which hardware differences forced the changes, but the primary difference in the two versions of the iPhone lie in the radios (Verizon’s GSM vs. AT&T’s  CDMA) or even the GPS chipset.  According to Telenav, the preceding edition was not compatible with the Verizon iPhone to any extent.

While it may not seem like it is affecting many applications at this time, the difference may carry unusual ramifications for app devs in the long run.