Jelly Bean now on 13.6% of Android devices. Gingerbread still leading with 45%

[nsane.forums]

About 7 months after its official release, Jelly Bean accounts for just 13.6% of Android devices. With only a few months until the next version of the OS comes, out it's clear Google has a problem.



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.

View: Original Article

[alanbrook]

Really this is very good information on Android Operating System..I hope everyone should need to know this history of Android...

[manpe]

The fragmentation keeps getting worse, although I distinctly remember Google promising to force manufacturers' hands to update their devices quicker. I haven't noticed any improvement in that area. Android updates so often that they can't or won't keep up.

[Nautilus]

Gingerbread is like Windows XP.

[jtmulc]

The fragmentation keeps getting worse, although I distinctly remember Google promising to force manufacturers' hands to update their devices quicker. I haven't noticed any improvement in that area. Android updates so often that they can't or won't keep up.

Not so much "can't" as "won't", I think. The manufacturers' goal is to sell more units. One of their selling points is "runs latest version of Android" which your current phone won't run because they won't release the update. My 3 year old Galaxy S runs Jellybean just fine, but only thanks to CyanogenMod. The last Samsung update for my phone was to Froyo.

If you want to run the latest version of Android on your phone or tablet, get a Nexus. Other devices may have better hardware specs, but Nexus is going to give you the best long term software support.

[Tweety.Abd]

The fragmentation keeps getting worse, although I distinctly remember Google promising to force manufacturers' hands to update their devices quicker. I haven't noticed any improvement in that area. Android updates so often that they can't or won't keep up.

Not so much "can't" as "won't", I think. The manufacturers' goal is to sell more units. One of their selling points is "runs latest version of Android" which your current phone won't run because they won't release the update. My 3 year old Galaxy S runs Jellybean just fine, but only thanks to CyanogenMod. The last Samsung update for my phone was to Froyo.

If you want to run the latest version of Android on your phone or tablet, get a Nexus. Other devices may have better hardware specs, but Nexus is going to give you the best long term software support.

You may add Sony to the list. Sony has great AOSP (CyanogenMod) support.

[ffi]

The fragmentation keeps getting worse, although I distinctly remember Google promising to force manufacturers' hands to update their devices quicker. I haven't noticed any improvement in that area. Android updates so often that they can't or won't keep up.

Not so much "can't" as "won't", I think. The manufacturers' goal is to sell more units. One of their selling points is "runs latest version of Android" which your current phone won't run because they won't release the update. My 3 year old Galaxy S runs Jellybean just fine, but only thanks to CyanogenMod. The last Samsung update for my phone was to Froyo.

Not true, the SGS1 got updated to Gingerbread and Samsung even tried to update the SGS1 to ICS but encountered so many problems they had to abondon the update (mainly because the update wouldn't fit on the internal storage). People that complain about android devices not getting enough updates really don't appriciate the work done by vendors on android. A desire running AOSP ICS feels like a big downgrade compared to one running gingerbread with sense

BTW ICS wasn't released in november 2011, it was presented than but it took a while before google officially released it, and by end of 2011 or the beginning of 2012 the first samsung ICS roms for the SGS2 already started showing up (and it took until around march before they became usable enough)...

BTW 45% of the devices running the same OS version I wouldn't really call fragmented...