Ice Cream Sandwich posts small gains in February

Any long-time Android observer knows how this goes: a new version of the operating system is painfully slow to germinate with the public. Such is the case with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, which now accounts for 1.6% of all Android devices across its three published versions. That’s about a 60% growth from just a month ago, but still only accounts for about 4.5 million phones and tablets, given Google’s MWC report of 300 million total Android devices.

Gingerbread remains the most popular Android version out there, with a whopping 62% of all devices. (That’s around 180 million phones running Android 2.3, with a few tablets like the Kindle Fire thrown in.) It’s posted about a 5% total gain since last month. Froyo is still hanging in there with 25.3%, Eclair comes in a distant third with 6.6%, and Honeycomb shrank ever so slightly to 3.3%, probably due to Ice Cream Sandwich upgrades for the Motorola XOOM and Asus Eee Pad Transformer.

If the slow adoption of ICS is discouraging for you, take heart in our Mobile World Congress 2012 coverage. Almost all the manufacturers showed off their latest and greatest running Android 4.0, with notable entries from HTC, Asus and Huawei, who showed nothing else. Most major manufacturers have committed to upgrades for late 2011 phones (even if some are taking their sweet time about it – we’re looking at you, Motorola). And of course, if you just can’t wait, there’s always the rooting option.