14 DAY TRIAL // Google’s Android Jelly Bean operating system is starting to gain more share on the market, courtesy of new device releases and various OS upgrades being pushed to devices.
Data collected by Google in the two weeks ending February 4 shows that Jelly Bean was loaded on 13.6 percent of all devices that accessed the Google Play Store in the timeframe.
12.2 percent of all active Android devices were running under the Android 4.1 platform release, while 1.4 percent of them were powered by the Android 4.2 flavor of the operating system.
Last month, the Jelly Bean platform accounted for 10.2 percent of all devices, with Android 4.1 present on 9 percent devices.
Android 2.3 Gingerbread, the platform iteration that powers the largest number of machines at the moment, has dropped further, now being loaded on only 45.6 percent handsets and tablet PCs, while accounting for 47.6 percent of them last month.
Data provided by Google also shows that Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich was loaded on 29 percent of active hardware in the past two weeks, down 0.1 percentage points from the 29.1 percent devices it was loaded on last month.
At the end of January 2013, Android 3.1 – 3.2 Honeycomb was running on 1.3 percent of all Android products out there, down 0.2 percentage points since early January.
As for the older Android releases, they lost even more ground in front of newer platform versions, with Android 1.6 Donut loaded on 0.2 percent active devices, Android 2.1 Éclair powering 2.2 percent of them, and Android 2.2 Froyo loaded on 8.1 percent devices.
As usual, these platform distribution numbers are meant to provide application developers with a better view of the ecosystem, so as to know which platform releases to target with their software. Additional info on the matter can be found on this page on the Android Developers website.
