14 DAY TRIAL // If you had any doubt that Android Lollipop will eventually jump the 20% milestone by the end of the year, then you were definitely mistaken.
Google has just published the Android distribution numbers for September and according to the data collected in the first week of the month, Lollipop is now on 21% of devices powered by Android.
Android KitKat still rules the rankings with a little more than 39%, but that is only meant to drop in the next couple of months.
The problem is Google will soon launch Android 6.0 Marshmallow operating system and the search giant will want to try and convince handset makers to launch as many new smartphones and tablets powered by the new mobile platform.
The only way is up for Android Lollipop, but not for long
It will most certainly take between 4 and 6 months for Android 6.0 Marshmallow to even reach 10% market share, and by the time it will be way over 20%, Google will probably launch a new version of the operating system.
Anyway, the rest of the Android versions included in the statistics show big drops in market share. For example, Android 2.2 Froyo is now listed with only 0.2%, while Android 2.3.3-2.3.7 Gingerbread has only 4.1% market share.
Android 4.0.3-4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich has even less than Gingerbread: 3.7%. The second ranked version of the OS when it comes to market share is Android Jelly Bean.
All Jelly Bean iterations make for $31.8% of the market share. Hopefully, that will get lower in the coming months.
According to Google, “this data is gathered from the new Google Play Store app, which supports Android 2.2 and above, so 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).”