Android Jelly Bean is losing even more ground on distribution charts

Jul 8, 2014 06:52 GMT  ·  By

On Monday, Google published new info on the distribution of the various iterations of its Android operating system, and revealed that Android 4.4 KitKat, the latest platform version, was at the time present on 17.9 percent of all Android devices out there.

The new data coming from the company shows that this OS flavor is continuing its ascension, as it was loaded on 13.6 percent devices in early June, while powering only 8.5 percent of them in the beginning of May.

Android 4.4 KitKat has been available since late last year, and it was expected to grow to the extent that it would dominate the Android platform distribution charts, though it seems that it is taking its time in doing so.

However, its ascension might actually accelerate, as the data published by Google on July 7 (which was collected in the 7-day period prior to that) shows that Jelly Bean is starting to lose even more ground.

At the beginning of June, this platform release was loaded on 58.4 percent of all Android devices out there, but it is now down to only 56.5 percent.

What’s interesting to note here, however, is the fact that, while Android 4.1.x and Android 4.3 lost market share, Android 4.2.x gained some ground. It is present on 19.7 percent devices now, up from 19.1 percent last month.

Older versions of the Android operating system, including 4.0.3 – 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich, 2.3.3 – 2.3.7 Gingerbread, and 2.2 Froyo lost even more share, and are slowly becoming obsolete.

Froyo, the older platform iteration to still be present on the Android distribution charts, is currently accounting for 0.7 percent devices, Gingerbread for 13.5 of them, while ICS powers 11.4 percent of all Android devices.

One thing that you should keep in mind when looking at this chart is the fact that the data was collected from the new Google Play Store app, which is not available on Android flavors prior to version 2.2.

Thus, the chart does not take into consideration these platform versions, though they account for a very small number of devices (as of August 2013, they were loaded on only 1 percent of Android devices that checked into Google servers).

Moving forth, we should see Android 4.4 KitKat being loaded on even more smartphones and tablets out there, while Jelly Bean, currently the leading OS iteration, will lose even more market share. Starting this fall, we’ll also start seeing Android L in these distribution charts.