Google today released its monthly breakdown of Android usage, and if you"ve been following along, there"s some pretty big news. For the first time in years, 2.2 Froyo isn"t listed anymore, which means that it"s running on less than 0.1% of devices.
In other news, Android 7.1 Nougat made its first appearance at 0.2%, so while the usage share of Nougat itself jumps from 0.4% to 0.7%, it now means that just 0.2% of users are on the latest version of Android.
This is uncharted territory for Google. After Marshmallow was released, it was a full year before Nougat showed up, giving it plenty of time to gain usage share. Now that the company is doing minor updates more frequently, it seems very unlikely that we"ll ever see more than 1% of users on the latest version of the OS, unless it changes how those updates are rolled out.
Here"s the full breakdown:
| Version | Codename | API | Last month | This month | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2.2 | Froyo | 8 | 0.1% | - | -0.1 |
| 2.33 - 2.3.7 | Gingerbread | 10 | 1.2% | 1% | -0.2 |
| 4.0.3 - 4.0.4 | Ice cream sandwich | 15 | 1.2% | 1.1% | -0.1 |
| 4.1.x | Jelly Bean | 16 | 4.5% | 4% | -0.5 |
| 4.2.x | 17 | 6.4% | 5.9% | -0.5 | |
| 4.3 | 18 | 1.9% | 1.7% | -0.2 | |
| 4.4 | KitKat | 19 | 24% | 22.6% | -1.4 |
| 5.0 | Lollipop | 21 | 10.8% | 10.1% | -0.7 |
| 5.1 | 22 | 23.2% | 23.3% | 0.1 | |
| 6.0 | Marshmallow | 23 | 26.3% | 29.6% | 3.3 |
| 7.0 | Nougat | 24 | 0.4% | 0.5% | 0.1 |
| 7.1 | 25 | - | 0.2% | 0.2 |
The big winner this month, like last month, is Marshmallow. In fact, its gain of 3.3 points shows an even faster rate of adoption than last month, which was 2.3. There are actually still devices coming out that are shipping with Marshmallow, so don"t expect this to decline in the foreseeable future.
Lollipop showed an overall loss, which it has been doing since May; however, version 5.1 continues to inch forward, although at a slower pace.
But aside from the four most recent versions of Android - 5.1, 6.0, 7.0, and 7.1 - everything else is on a steady decline, which is no surprise, as these versions are aging. However, if Froyo"s history is any indication of the future, it will be quite a while until Gingerbread disappears from that list.