Newsletter
Each month a number of reports from data crunching companies come through and look to explain the current landscape of Android. The latest of which came from comScore last week and detailed that Android now occupies 52.8-percent of the U.S. operating system market. Following on from that report and the latest Android distribution figures direct from the Android Developers team have now been released and highlight the current breakdown of all the versions of Android that are currently used. As is usually the case, these figures relate to data which is collected over a seven-day period and in this case, a seven-day period which came to an end on March 7.
In terms of the latest figures, the big headline aspect is that Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) has now effectively doubled in its level of distribution. The figures for March now show Marshmallow running on 2.3-percent of devices, which is significantly up from the 1.2-percent figure which was noted for last month. Although, in reality, this only represents a 1-percent increase, the increase between Jan and Feb was only about 0.5-percent, again highlighting the much quicker rising of Marshmallow over the past month. Another headline aspect is that Android 5.0 (Lollipop) now resides on 36.1-percent, an increase from last month’s total of 34.1-percent. The reason why this is of specific interest is that it is the first time that Lollipop has surpassed Android 4.4 (KitKat), which now makes Lollipop the most widely used version of Android for the first time.
Speaking of KitKat, Android 4.4 has now dropped down from last month’s 35.5-percent total to this month 34.3-percent level, marking a decrease of just over 1-percent. Moving further back and Android 4.1.x – 4.3 (Jelly Bean) has now dropped to 22.3-percent, down from its previous total of 23.9-percent. Likewise, Android 4.0.3 – 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) has also dropped down from its previous total of 2.5-percent to its current 2.3-percent level. While Gingerbread is another aspect which sees a drop, albeit a very slight one down from 2.7-percent to its new total of 2.6-percent. Completing the distribution list is Android 2.2 (Froyo) which in spite of seeing its first drop in a long time last month, currently remains stable on 0.1-percent.
