Google has updated its Android Developer Dashboard site with data about the percentage of active devices running a given version of its mobile operating system. Unsurprisingly, the holiday season marked a few shifts in the version distribution of the platform, with Android 4.2 and 4.1 -- both named Jelly Bean -- breaking the 10 percent milestone for the first time in six months.
According to data collected by Google from its Google Play store for a two-week period ending January 3, version 4.1 is on 9 percent of Android devices, while Android 4.2 (only available to Nexus devices right now) has 1.2 percent. The two versions combined accounted for 6.7 percent of devices last month.
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich's presence also climbed from 27.5 percent in December to 29.1 percent this month, while Android 2.3 "Gingerbread" dropped below 50 percent for the first time to 47.6 percent. The latter is still by far the most popular version of Android and hasn't seen an update since September 2011.
Rounding out the list, Android 2.2 Froyo runs 9 percent of all Android devices, Android 2.1 Eclair powers 2.4 percent, and Android 1.6 Donut and 1.5 Cupcake together account for just 0.2 percent.
Google has been working to improve roll out times but that's no easy task having to deal with multiple carriers and phone manufacturers. By comparisson, roughly 61 percent of iOS devices were running the latest 6.0 version one month after its release and by mid-December it had surpassed the 70 percent mark.
The slow adoption rate of new Android versions remains one of the main drawbacks of Google's smartphone platform. For developers, it means dedicating resources to support multiple versions of Android, while the average user who won't manually root and update their device is left out on new features and security updates.
Source : techspot[dot]com
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