Footy mad Android owners will have to look on longingly at their iPhone, iPod touch and iPad-sporting chums as Sports Interactive's studio manager Miles Jacobson has told Pocket-lint that the company currently has no plans to release Football Manager 2012 for the Google operating system.

Jacobson, who was awarded an OBE in the New Year's Honours list this year for services to the games industry, explained that while the iOS versions will be released "before Christmas" the Android ecosystem is too fragmented to consider supporting that platform:

"We hope at some point there is less fragmentation in the Android market, but that is why we haven't gone onto Android already," he explained. "Basically, with everyone making their own version of Android it makes it really really hard [to guarantee that it works universally].

"Open source software is fantastic, but that's also where Linux has gone wrong for us. If there was one flavour of Linux, we'd have a Linux version out there. But with six or seven different versions of Linux, that's six or seven different amounts of testing we'd have to do. It's not the actual development, it's testing a game that's as massive as Football Manager.

"And that's the same with Android. We want to do it as a studio. We have a bunch of guys at the studio who have Android phones. We'd love to do it. But, at the moment, we're not there. So, we're sticking to iOS for now."

Jacobson is keen to point out, however, that although Android owners will miss out, you won't need an iPhone 4 or 4S to play Football Manager 2012: "The next version of Football Manager will still work on iPhone 3, iPod touch and iPad" he said. "And the iPad version will have some special stuff as well."

What do you think? Are you miffed that FM2012 isn't coming to an Android device? Or is there another game out there that you'd recommend as an alternative? Let us know in the comments below...