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 December 11, and only represents devices that have visited the Google Play Store during that period, so it does not include AOSP devices.
| Version | Codename | API | Last month | This month | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2.3.3 - 2.3.7 | Gingerbread | 10 | 0.5% | 0.4% | -0.1 |
| 4.0.3 - 4.0.4 | Ice Cream Sandwich | 15 | 0.5% | 0.5% | - |
| 4.1.x | Jelly Bean | 16 | 2.2% | 2.0% | -0.2 |
| 4.2.x | 17 | 3.1% | 3.0% | -0.1 | |
| 4.3 | 18 | 0.9% | 0.9% | - | |
| 4.4 | KitKat | 19 | 13.8% | 13.4% | -0.4 |
| 5.0 | Lollipop | 21 | 6.4% | 6.1% | -0.3 |
| 5.1 | 22 | 20.8% | 20.2% | -0.6 | |
| 6.0 | Marshmallow | 23 | 30.9% | 29.7% | -1.2 |
| 7.0 | Nougat | 24 | 17.6% | 19.3% | 1.7 |
| 7.1 | 25 | 3.0% | 4.0% | 1.0 | |
| 8.0 | Oreo | 26 | 0.3% | 0.5% | 0.2 |
Gingerbread is finally beginning to decline in usage share, after remaining at 0.6% for months, as did Ice Cream Sandwich. Jelly Bean is also continuing on a slow but steady decline. KitKat, on the other hand, has a decline that"s beginning to slow, as it had such a usage share that it took the largest loss for over a year straight.
Lollipop is continuing to lose about a point in usage share every month, which is no surprise given that it"s continuing to age. Marshmallow is also finally beginning to lose its users, although it remains the most used version of the Android OS.
Android 7.0 and 7.1 Nougat once again saw the largest gains - holding a combined 23.3% of all Google Play devices, with Android 8.0 Oreo adoption being slow. After all, the new version of Google"s mobile OS is almost four months old, remaining at just 0.5% usage share.