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It’s that time again, time for another update to Android’s platform distribution numbers. This time around, Google’s changing up some things. First off, they’ve completely done away with Donut and Eclair. This isn’t because collectively they only accounted for 1.3% of Android devices last month, but because the Google Play Store app is only compatible with Android 2.2 on up. Since Google provides these numbers as a tool for developers when building apps, we suppose it only makes sense.
Also new for August is Google now only accounting for Android devices that have pinged Google Play within the last 7 days, as opposed to 14 in previously. This should help weed out devices that really aren’t being used. As for reported numbers for August, let’s take a look at the changes:
- Jelly Bean: 45.1% (40.5% in July)
- Ice Cream Sandwich: 21.7% (22.5% in July)
- Gingerbread: 30.7% (33.1% in July)
What’s interesting is even though Android 4.3 officially debuted with the new Nexus 7 2013 towards the end of July, and the Nexus 4 officially received the update as well, it’s completely missing from last month’s numbers. An oversight? Perhaps. Would have been interesting to see at least a small blip on the radar. Looking ahead, it seems as though we’ll see Ice Cream Sandwich completely disappear before Gingerbread, which is still hanging on for dear life.
[Android]
Gingerbread is still at 30% that’s absurd
It’s all of the lame knockoffy, crappy tablets that people are either getting for free with some store promotions. Or people that just don’t understand that their phone is actually a living breathing dinosaur.
don’t understad/don’t care/metro pcs phones
Or people that got an Android phone years ago, and don’t know or care their its a smart phone, never install any apps, never use the Internet, and only use the stock functions that came with it. They may not even realize the play store with all the tons of apps they could use exists.
True. You’d be surprised at how many people don’t even realize the instructional widget & others can be removed/customized/etc… , years after getting their phone/tablet.
That is so true, I know some one who bought 2 GS4, one for him and the other one for his wife, and he didn’t know what to do with it or the potential of the device. He has had for a few weeks and the screen were still the same way as it came. I got rid of all the junk he had on his home screen.
“Or people that got an Android phone years ago, and don’t know or care their its a smart phone, never install any apps, never use the Internet, and only use the stock functions that came with it.”
Look again at the source. These numbers come from users visiting the Play Store, so these people MUST be on the internet, and presumably are downloading apps.
The people who never visit the Play Store don’t get counted.
The people do NOT have to visit the Play Store to count. It just has to ping the Play Store, meaning the Play Store could just run in the background looking for updates.
Majority of knockoff tablets run ICS. Chinese manufacturers switched to that about a year ago. GB is probably from all the e-readers and kindles. And I say GB is a great Android flavor for any hardware with less than a gig of RAM.
Android doesn’t bring many innovations now so it’s not necessary to update……
innovations come mostly from Samsung (IR remote) or XDA
so not a big need to update
I’ve got an old phone, waterproof and rugged Casio G’zOne on gingerbread, that I use for GPS tracking and as a bluetooth audio source (with a 32GB micro-SD full of tunes). It is not going to be updated, and I’ll probably be using it for another few years.
Gingerbread is still a great OS, and in my experience could run 99% of the apps i tried to download. In addition when i did finally upgrade to ics it killed my performance, gingerbread was lighter. JB is equal to or maybe slightly better than GB, when you are talking hardware that isn’t top of the line as of the last 12 months
I still use my Droid Incredible running Gingerbread as an alarm clock. Since it rarely hits the Play store for updates, I guess it doesn’t count.
I’m sure your phone was counted. Even if you don’t purposefully open Play store, the play store service regularly checks in to see if there are updates to itself.
Honeycomb is also missing.
Honeycomb’s there 0.1%
Might as well be missing tho. the day we see Gingerbread out of the chart I will be very happy. Hopefully soon, but realistically a while.
Almost 70% on 4.x, not bad.
Except for everyone on 4.0 or 4.1 that are pissed about not being updated to 4.2 (and soon 4.3).
They way I see it, all the Android fans are screaming for 4.2 right now which is only available on 8.5% of devices. Not good.
It’s nice to see the older version numbers getting smaller, nothing worse than suggesting an app to someone who can’t even run it.
It’s a good thing that Android didn’t have Bacon before Cupcake, because if Google tried to kill off bacon…
The collective Internet has already killed bacon and battered its corpse into the ground by never shutting the funk up about it.
The people at Google really need to stop getting high before naming their next OS. Or at least they should wait until the catered lunch arrives.