If you have used either devices running Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android operating system for any decent period of time, you’ve no doubt experienced apps inexplicably crashing (freezing or shutting down on their own) before.

 

Now, a new study has found that iOS apps are more likely to crash than their Android counterparts.

 

According to results released by Crittercism, which monitors mobile apps, iOS 5.0.1 emerged as the main culprit of apps crashing on the iOS platform between the first and fifteenth of December last year. At both operating systems’ worst, Apple’s latest OS addition (5.0.1) was responsible for a whopping 28% of app crashes while Android 2.3.3 delivered 3.86% crashes during this period.

 

However, commenting on the report, Forbes pointed out that the sheer number of OS versions on both platforms play a role in app crashes.

 

 

It explained that the large number of OS versions or updates has meant that developers find themselves having to contend with an increasing number of OS versions to test their apps on.

 

One clear indication of this problem is that Crittercism monitored 23 different iOS operating systems and 33 Android operating systems on which apps had crashed for its report, numbers which developers have to contend with on a growing basis.

 

In an interview with Forbes, Crittercism’s  chief executive officer Andrew Levy elaborated that other factors can also cause apps to crash. These range from hardware issues, such as the use of location or GPS services or cameras; connectivity problems to the internet or one’s cellular network, as well as apps using too much of a device’s memory.

 

 

 

He further pointed out that new OS versions were more likely to present problems, and anticipated that Google’s Ice Cream Sandwich would likely present similar results as Apple’s iOS 5.0.1 at least at the beginning, when it is made widely available.

 

While the solution seems obvious: consolidate OS’s into fewer versions, it’s not quite that simple. This is mainly because of the sheer range of devices and what OS’s they are capable of running, as well as the fact that many users may not update their OS when a new version is released even if their device does support it.

 

This is further compounded by new updates being constantly released for the apps themselves, often to address specific bugs.

 

 

Of course, updating and hopefully improving on both apps and the operating systems they run on is mostly a good thing, and certainly not a trend we would want to see end. However, it also means that the likelihood of app crashes on both platforms will probably remain high, as long as both Google and Apple continue implementing new features and developers constantly try keep up.