Android Nougat Now on 2.8 Percent of Active Devices, Sees Significant Growth

Google's Android Nougat, the latest publicly available version of Google's mobile and tablet operating system, is now running on 2.8 percent of active Android devices, according to the latest Google Play distribution data. The latest version has seen significant 1.6 percent increase since February. Google has updated its Google Play distribution data for the seven-day period ending March 6.

The latest distribution numbers confirm that Android 7.0 is now present on 2.4 percent and Android 7.1 on 0.4 percent devices. Sharing the latest distribution data of different versions of Android, Google reported that Marshmallow has a total share of 31.3 percent of Android devices that check into Google Play, compared to the 30.7 percent reported in November - an increase of 0.6 percent. Unlike previous Android distribution numbers, Android 6.0 Marshmallow is not the most used Android version in March, and has been replaced by Android Lollipop.

In the latest data released by Google, Android Lollipop has a total share of around 32.5 percent of active Android devices (with Android 5.0 Lollipop running on 9.4 percent of devices and Android 5.1 Lollipop at 23.1 percent) that checked into Google Play. Last month, Android Lollipop was running on 32.9 percent of active Android devices. The Android Developers' webpage shows that Android KitKat now powers 20.8 percent of devices compared to 21.9 percent last month.

Other Android versions listed in the latest distribution data include Android Jelly Bean which has a combined share of 10.6 percent while Android 4.0.x or Ice Cream Sandwich and Android Gingerbread (v2.3.3-2.3.7), in Google's latest numbers, registered a share of 1 percent each. To note, the figures are gathered from devices visiting the Google Play app, which only supports Android 2.2 and above.

The latest OpenGL version distribution numbers, on the other hand, saw OpenGL 2.0 at 39.5 percent, and OpenGL version 3.0 steadily rising to 42.3 percent.