Google has published its latest monthly breakdown of platform usage, showing the proportion of active devices running each version of the Android OS.
The data was collected during a seven-day period ending on February 6, and shows very little change among the oldest versions of the OS still in use, including Android 2.3 Gingerbread, which is destined to lose Google Play Services support very soon.
| Version | Codename | API | Last month | This month | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2.33 - 2.3.7 | Gingerbread | 10 | 1.0% | 1.0% | - |
| 4.0.3 - 4.0.4 | Ice cream sandwich | 15 | 1.1% | 1.0% | -0.1 |
| 4.1.x | Jelly Bean | 16 | 4.0% | 4.0% | - |
| 4.2.x | 17 | 5.9% | 5.7% | -0.2 | |
| 4.3 | 18 | 1.7% | 1.6% | -0.1 | |
| 4.4 | KitKat | 19 | 22.6% | 21.9% | -0.7 |
| 5.0 | Lollipop | 21 | 10.1% | 9.8% | -0.3 |
| 5.1 | 22 | 23.3% | 23.1% | -0.2 | |
| 6.0 | Marshmallow | 23 | 29.6% | 30.7% | 1.1 |
| 7.0 | Nougat | 24 | 0.5% | 0.9% | 0.4 |
| 7.1 | 25 | 0.2% | 0.3% | 0.1 |
There wasn"t much of an increase in usage for the very newest versions either. Almost six months after its release, Android 7.0 Nougat is now on just 0.9% of active devices, while the newer version 7.1 - which made its debut on Google"s flagship Pixel phones in October - has reached only 0.3% of devices. Together, both Nougat versions are running on just 1.2% of active Android devices.
Android 6.0 Marshmallow continues to grow in usage; 16 months after its rollout began, it rose by over 1 percentage point compared with last month, passing the 30% milestone for the first time. This is no great surprise given that even major manufacturers, such as HTC, are continuing to launch new devices with Marshmallow, despite months of Nougat availability.
Android 5.0 and 5.1 Lollipop together account for 32.9% of devices, while the three-and-a-half-year-old Android 4.4 KitKat is still installed on nearly 22% of devices in use.
Google"s monthly breakdowns of Android version usage continue to paint an ugly picture of the platform"s fragmentation. That not only causes complications for developers, but also indicates that a startlingly large proportion of Android users have no access to the latest software updates, including the newest security patches for their devices.
Source: Android Developers