Why Mobile Manufacturers Are Not Doing Regular Monthly Security Patches?

What do you do? If I tell, you are the reason for Mobile Manufacturers Are Not Doing Regular Monthly Security Patches. Yep, Read the below complete article and try to understand, Why you are the reason. Security updates of the operating system should be available for any mobile or tablet device ideally. But this is not happening in reality. Mobile and tablet manufacturers ought to release updates for their manufactured devices every month to keep the OS of the device protected, and the user privacy protected too. That is the job of security patches- to keep the device secure for accessing all functions and apps, etc.

Even Google has this in Contract too that manufacturers must release the updates periodically from time to time. Still, things are not rolling out as required and desired. Why is this happening, and is this the right way things should be? Can consumers still feel protected when updates are not getting released as frequently as they should?

Google has it already rolled out in its policies

As per the Google guidelines in its contract with all smartphone and tablet manufacturers, the security patches which are released by the Google software engineering team they must release every month for their users. And such updates must be published regularly and periodically for two years from the purchase of the device. This will ensure users feel protected and data privacy and security is prevalent. Even if monthly releases are not made available, still four updates in a year must be there, and this should continue till the second year. In the second year even if the updates are not available every three months, yet there must be made available some security patches through the year.

That is how real it should be as per the contract between Google and the manufacturing companies of smartphone devices. But smartphone manufacturers are facing a hard time releasing such updates periodically as needed. Many companies are not regular in releasing updates. And that’s why many users complain not to get security match updates for their Android OS on time or as needed through the use.

Why mobile security patch updates are not available monthly

Although Google has made it a mandate in its contract with smartphone makers, the makers are not making the updates so much open as needed, and therefore the users are complaining in many cases of not getting updated security patches. It’s a strange world! That’s because many users do not want to install updates, who do not take an interest in checking for them too, and also many are not aware of the availability of security patches from Google. This in the first place explains very well why mobile phone manufacturing companies are not releasing regular OS security patches. If you get into the details, there are more contributing factors behind this scenario.

Inner reports confirm that most users are not bothered about installing updates

One significant reason that mobile phone makers are not taking the pain to release monthly security patches is because of the disinterest of users actually in installing the updates. As per the internal reports verified by one of the software engineers of a leading smartphone manufacturing company(Can’t Reveal His name..:)), this is a fact that only a handful of users who are using high-end smartphones are just interested in security patches.

The rest of the users of smartphones who are investing in phones in the medium price range or varied ranges, are not interested or bothered about updates or patches. That is why manufacturers are also not taking as much interest in releasing security patches timely.

More facts that affect the release of updates by mobile makers

These exciting facts would give you a better idea of what the public or users are demanding out of their mobiles and the OS.

• Updates and security patches of the Android OS are downloaded by only 2% to 10% of global smartphone users. This is a small percentage throughout the world, which shows how small a portion of the users is aware of the importance of the patches. And this is one of the reasons manufacturers do not get inclined or pressed to release the updates monthly. To Explain this in Brief If the user Install January Update, Mostly they didn’t install February Update, they install update only after two or three months.

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• Costs effectiveness of the mobiles is not affected by the late release of the updates from the users. It is also a strong reason that smartphone makers release updates once in 2 to 3 months.

• Finally, Google’s contract with the smartphone and tablet makers also specify the release of patches to be ideal when done in 3 months or so and not monthly actually.

Altogether these reasons make the smartphone manufacturers release security patches 3 to 5 times in a year for the first and second years after the purchase of the device.

Concluding notes

Updates and security patches for the Android operated devices are a must from time to time. Officially Google releases updates every month too. But updates still only get available once in 2 to 3 months. This is not a significant threat to security but can be improved when awareness of users also improve.

Selva Ganesh

Selva Ganesh is the Chief Editor of this Blog. He is a Computer Science Engineer, An experienced Android Developer, Professional Blogger with 8+ years in the field. He completed courses about Google News Initiative. He runs Android Infotech which offers Problem Solving Articles around the globe.