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Jelly Bean now on 16.5 percent Android devices, Gingerbread share declines to 44.2 percent

Jelly Bean now on 16.5 percent Android devices, Gingerbread share declines to 44.2 percent

By Anupam Saxena | Updated: 6 March 2013 12:35 IST

Google has shared the updated monthly Android distribution data which reveals that Jelly Bean, the latest version of Android is now on 16.5 percent Android devices.

According to the data released by Google for the month of March, the percentage of devices currently running Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0.x) is more or less stable at 28.6 percent, a marginal decline of 0.4 percent compared to last month. Similar to what we'd seen in the last report, Gingerbread (Android 2.x) is now below the 50 percent mark running on 44.2 percent of all Android devices according to the latest data.

However, for the first time, the combined share of Android 2.2 and 2.1 went below the 10 percent mark at 9.5 percent, down from 10.3 percent last month which is certainly good news as it indicates that users are slowly abandoning devices that run old iterations of the OS and choosing new devices.

As we pointed out at the time of the release of the previous report, Jelly Bean's finally showing up on more devices, but there's fragmentation within this version, with Android 4.1 running on 14.9 percent of the devices, and Android 4.2 being present on just 1.6 percent. The latest iteration (4.2) has majorly been rolled out on Nexus devices at the moment barring one or two exceptions. So only 1.6 percent of all Android devices are running the latest version of the Android operating system.

It's always good for more users to be on new iterations of the OS as it helps developers in optimising their apps for limited devices, taking less time and resources. Also, older devices running old versions of the OS don't offer the same experience that devices running new versions do in terms of performance.

The real challenge would be to see more devices running Jelly Bean, as Ice Cream Sandwich penetration saturates and new devices coming with the new version of the OS, but Google is expected to announce the next version of Android, Key Lime Pie, in May at its I/O event, so fragmentation will still prevail.

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Further reading: Android, Android 2.2, Android 4.1, Android 4.2, Android mobiles, Froyo, Gingerbread, Google, Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean, iOS, iOS 6