Google has published the latest round of statistics regarding the usage patterns of their Android operating system. The numbers represent a 14 day period in which the company tracks all the devices that access its Play store and crunches out graphs and charts.
These latest stats show that Jelly Bean, the latest version of Android now accounts for 13.6% of the total number of users. The number may sound good, but the picture isn't so rosy when you stop and consider that Jelly Bean has actually been on the market for about 7 months (it was released to AOSP on the 9th of July last year). Not to mention the fact that Google is planning to launch a brand new version of the OS, named Key Lime Pie, in just a few months.
This low percentage point shows that Google still has major issues when it comes to convincing manufacturers and carriers to support their devices with updates. In fact one could argue that most of these Jelly Bean devices are actually newly bought Nexus devices which are supported directly by Google such as the Nexus 7 and 10 tablets that have been selling quite well.
The chart also shows Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, the previous version of the operating system to be hovering just under the 30% mark, and that was launched in November of 2011. In fact the biggest swath of Android users are still on Gingerbread (Android 2.3.x) which was released in December of 2010 and is still being used on low end cheap phones that have flooded developing markets.
The fact that even older versions of Android such as Froyo, Éclair and Donut still make up a sizable chunk of the Android user base (over 10%) might seem alarming, especially when you compare these stats with those of Apple or even Microsoft that can get a very high adoption rate for their latest update within a couple of days or weeks. However, these stats also show that there is a large number of people on 2 year old devices and if they are still fans of the operating system they might begin purchasing new devices in large numbers when their contracts expire which would definitely end up in Google’s favor.
It remains to be seen if that prediction will pan out but so far one thing’s for sure, the undisputed leader in smartphone operating systems has a major problem when it comes to updating devices.
Source: developer.android.com | Images via developer.android.com
24 Comments - Add comment