Gingerbread and older Android releases have taken the hit

Aug 2, 2012 08:15 GMT  ·  By

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich has been growing significantly lately, even if Google made available a new flavor of its mobile operating system, namely Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

During the past two weeks, 15.9 percent of all active Android devices accessing the Google Play Store were powered by Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest data from Google shows.

From the total number of active devices, 0.1 percent were found to run under Android 4.0 – 4.0.2, while 15.8 percent of them were powered by Android 4.0.3 – 4.0.4.

The data has been collected in the 14-day period ending August 1st, 2012, and shows a significant increase when compared to the report that Google provided a month before.

At that time, the platform was loaded on 10.9 percent of all active Android devices, five percentage points less than now.

Android 4.1 Jelly Bean managed to grab only 0.8 percent of devices in the weeks it has been available, yet it does show a nice growth.

With various mobile phone makers around the world getting ready to upgrade many of their Ice Cream Sandwich phones to Jelly Bean, it should not be too long before the newer platform gains more market share.

Ice Cream Sandwich’s growth in July affected the performance of Android 2.3 Gingerbread, which is now loaded on 60.6 percent active Android devices, down from 64 percent a month ago.

Android 3.0 Honeycomb, the platform version aimed at tablets, lost ground as well in the past month, now being present on 2.3 percent devices.

Older Android releases lost ground as well, most probably because users started to upgrade to newer devices, and due to the fact that the market has expanded, while their number decreased.

Thus, Android 2.2 Froyo was loaded on only 15.5% active devices in the past two weeks, down from 17.3 percent a month ago, while Android 2.1 Éclair powered 4.2% devices, down from 4.7 percent in early July.

Android 1.6 Donut accounted for only 0.5 percent of active devices in July, while Android 1.5 Cupcake for 0.2 percent of them, the same as last month.

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Android platform distribution as of August 1st, 2012
Android platform distribution as of August 1st, 2012
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