Despite developer concerns over the state of Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG [1]) open-source Android mobile operating system, the platform is not as fragmented as many believe, according to mobile app analytics firm Localytics.

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41% of all sessions came from Android devices with 4.3 inch screens.

While significant differences in Android manufacturing partners, device form factors and OS builds do exist, Localytics states that 73 percent of all apps leveraging its analytics solution run a variant of Android 2.3, a.k.a. Gingerbread. Another 23 percent of user sessions run some flavor of Android 2.2/Froyo, meaning that developers targeting both OS builds can achieve 96 percent compatibility across the Android ecosystem.

Forty-one percent of Android app sessions in the Localytics study originated on devices with 4.3-inch screens, followed by 4-inch screens at 22 percent, 3.2-inch models at 11 percent and 3.7-inch smartphones at 9 percent. Screen resolutions of 800 x 480 pixels contributed 62 percent of sessions; resolutions 480 x 320 made up 14 percent of sessions, trailed by 960 x 540 (6 percent), 480 x 854 (5 percent) and 320 x 240 (5 percent).

“For both screen size and resolution, Android developers have more to deal with than iOS developers, thanks to Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL [3]) single handset form factor,” Localytics states. “However, with five options accounting for more than 90 percent of all Android app usage, the fragmentation is not particularly daunting.”

Looking at Android tablets, a segmented dominated by Amazon.com’s Kindle Fire, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, 74 percent of usage takes place on devices with 7-inch screens with 1024 x 600 resolution. Twenty-two percent of app sessions occur on 10.1-inch devices with 1280 x 800 resolutions. Localytics adds that 71 percent of Android tablets run Gingerbread, with 21 percent running a flavor of Android 3.0/Honeycomb.

Android fragmentation is regularly cited as a decisive factor behind developer preference for Apple’s iOS platform, despite Android’s commanding lead in terms of international market share. Speaking at January’s Consumer Electronics Show, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt maintained Android is not fragmented, but differentiated.

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