14 DAY TRIAL // As usual, Google unveiled the monthly Android distribution numbers and at first glance, there are little to no changes in comparison with last month’s figures.
We reported back in December that Android Jelly Bean continued to dominate the smartphone/tablet market with almost 60% of these devices running this particular version of Google’s operating system.
Today, Google has confirmed that no less than 60.7% of the devices accessing the Play store were running a version of Android Jelly Bean operating system. Here are the raw numbers: Android 4.1.x (35.5%), Android 4.2.x (16.3%), Android 4.3 (8.9%).
Unfortunately, the distribution of Android 4.4 KitKat platform on current devices is extremely slow as the numbers show. If things continue this way, Google might announce the next version of Android before KitKat could reach 50% of the market share.
Last month, the search giant reported that around 1.4% of the devices accessing Google Play Store were running Android 4.4 KitKat operating system.
Well, it looks like in January, this number increased by 0.4% to 1.8%, which is not that much at all. The rest of the numbers seem to be unchanged. Here they are:
- Android 2.2 Froyo: 1.3% - Android 2.3 Gingerbread: 20% - Android 3.2 Honeycomb: 0.1% - Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich: 16.1%
There will probably be a surge in KitKat devices soon after Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2014, which is set for late February, but these devices might not go on sale until March or April. This means that KitKat distribution will continue to suffer.
According to Google, “because this data is gathered from the new Google Play Store app, which supports Android 2.2 and above, devices running older versions are not included.
“However, in August, 2013, versions older than Android 2.2 accounted for about 1% of devices that checked in to Google servers (not those that actually visited Google Play Store).”
