14 DAY TRIAL // Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of Android that Google made available for its users several months ago, is starting to appear on more and more devices out there.
The latest data coming from Google shows that Ice Cream Sandwich is now loaded on 4.9 percent of all active Android devices out there, up from only 2.9 percent only a month ago.
Android 4.0 - Android 4.0.2 iterations of the platform are present on 0.5 percent of active devices, while the newer Android 4.0.3 - Android 4.0.4 flavors run on 4.4 percent of them.
Data collected during the 14 days ending May 1st, 2012 shows that Android 2.3 Gingerbread continues to gain ground among active devices (those who have accessed the Google Play Store in the aforementioned two weeks’ timeframe).
At the moment, the platform version is loaded on 64.4 percent of active devices, Google says. Of all devices, 63.9 percent run Android 2.3.3 - Android 2.3.7, while 0.5 percent of them are powered by Android 2.3 - Android 2.3.2.
Gingerbread has secured the first position on the Android distribution charts less than a year after being officially launched, but it is expected to lose the position in favor of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
In fact, the OS variant has seen its growth slowing down significantly as of late. Last month, it was loaded on 63.7 percent devices, only 0.7 percentage points less than this month.
Older Android releases (pre-Gingerbread versions) are slowly fading away, accounting for increasingly less devices out there.
Android 2.2 Froyo is currently loaded on 20.9 percent active devices, while Android 2.1 Éclair is present on 5.5 percent of them.
Android 1.5 Cupcake and Android 1.6 Donut account for only 0.3 and 0.7 percent of active Android device at the moment, the same as last month.
These numbers are meant to help developers make a better idea of how the Android landscape looks like, so that they could design their applications to target specific OS flavors and devices. Additional details can be found on Android Developers' website.
