March Android Distribution Numbers are In: KitKat Hits 2.5% with Jelly Bean at 62%

Here’s some good news, for the most part anyways. Google has just released the latest platform numbers for the month of March. As we can see from the image above, Jelly Bean now has the biggest share of the market. With 35.3% on Android 4.1, 17.1% on Android 4.2, and 9.6% on Android 4.3. Which brings Jelly Bean to 62%. While KitKat is still sitting at just 2.5%, which is pretty much what we expected. We shouldn’t expect that number to grow much until Samsung gets their KitKat update out to more devices, as they do have a huge market share in the Android world.

Other notable numbers include Ice Cream Sandwich at 15.2%, Honeycomb at 0.1%, Gingerbread at 19% and Froyo at 1.2%. It’s still pretty surprising to see Gingerbread with 19%, but at least it’s down to less than 1 in every 5 devices.

Compared to last months numbers of 1.3% for Froyo, 20% for Gingerbread, 0.1% for Honeycomb, 16.1% for Ice Cream Sandwich, 35.5% on Android 4.1, 16.3% on Android 4.2, and 8.9% on Android 4.3, which is 60.7% for Jelly Bean, and 1.8% for KitKat. So all the numbers went down, except for Android 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, and 4.4. Which is about what we expected. Even though I’d love to see everyone on Android 4.x and higher, we also have to realize that Android is on everything, even feature phones. Which most people with feature phones don’t upgrade their phone every year or even every couple of years. But it makes me happy to see 2.5% on KitKat. I suspect that number will jump pretty high next month, once more Samsung KitKat updates are out. Especially for the Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy S4. And in May it should be even higher with the Galaxy S5 launching in April.

So what version of Android is everyone out there running? I’ve got Android 4.4.2 on every device I own, and every review unit I have in my possession right now. Which is pretty amazing, and I don’t think that’s ever happened before.