Android growth over the past few years has been phenomenal and we have seen lots of new powerful phones being launched every year. Google has released the latest version of Android, 4.0 or the Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) last October along with the release of the Galaxy Nexus from Samsung. But ever since the release of ICS, the adoption rate of Android 4.0 was very slow. Most of the phone manufacturers took time to upgrade their handsets from Gingerbread to ICS. Even now popular phones like Galaxy Note and Samsung Galaxy SII hasn’t received the ICS updates for all users.
But most of the phones launched recently like HTC One X and Samsung Galaxy S3 are shipping with ICS. The Android developers portal provides some information on the distribution of Android versions. The below pie chart and table is based on the number of Android devices that have accessed Google Play within a 14-day period ending on May 1st.
As you can see from the chart, the ICS share is just 5% considering that ICS is the best Android version released so far. Also, around 27% of users are still on Froyo and below and there are very low chances that these people will be upgrading to latest versions. Even some of the phones released recently and running on Gingerbread does not offer ICS upgrade like LG Optimus Sol.
In the coming few months, we should definitely see an increase in ICS share as most of the Gingerbread handsets might get the upgrade.
does it make sense then that they are about to release jelly bean?