The latest Android usage numbers are in and this time around marks the first we are seeing Jelly Bean with more than a 10 percent share. Granted, it is just barely above the 10 percent mark, but at least we are seeing forward progress in terms of the latest Android release. According to the usage numbers coming from Google, Jelly Bean now accounts for 10.2 percent.
That of course does break down further. Android 4.1 has 9 percent with 4.2 picking up the remaining 1.2 percent. And just for comparison sake, Jelly Bean usage totaled 6.7 percent in the previous month. Otherwise, much of the numbers are doing what we would expect. Though, this latest usage report does mark the time when Gingerbread dropped below 50 percent.
In fact, Gingerbread usage went from 50.8 percent in December to 47.6 percent in January. Granted, that is not much below the 50 percent mark, but progress is being made and we would expect to see that continue to drop as those device owners reach their two-year agreement length and begin to upgrade. Otherwise, Ice Cream Sandwich saw a small growth this month, going from 27.5 percent in December up to 29.1 percent in the January report. We would expect to see Ice Cream Sandwich continue to grow, at least in the short term.
Honeycomb as well as Froyo and Eclair continue to drop off and this latest report also has one other nice little tidbit — there was no mention of Android 1.5 Cupcake, which dropped from 0.1 percent on the December report. Finally, as always, these numbers are released direct from Google and based on data collected during a 14-day period, which in this case ended on January 3, 2013. The data is collected from devices accessing Google Play.
[via Google]
I think 2013 will be a very different year for “fragmentation”. OEM are investigating alternate OS options (Samsung and Tizen) and Google seems intent on pouring more into its Nexus line of products. I would think those sorts of things would funnel those sticking with Android towards newer versions of the OS. I will most certainly be moving from Gingerbread to ICS or hopefully JB on my upgrade this year.
Google could fix this mess quickly if they let users upgrade the OS instead of the carriers and/or hardware vendors.
you want google to port over AOSP to support each OEMs hardware so they can update their devices? well that would be a pain in the ass and a big money drain for google.
So this leaves 13.1% of users not on Gingerbread, Ice Cream Sandwich, or Jelly Bean! Considering those are the 3 best releases of Android, this is good news for Google!