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 August 7, 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 | 0.7% | 0.7% | - |
| 4.0.3 - 4.0.4 | Ice Cream Sandwich | 15 | 0.7% | 0.7% | - |
| 4.1.x | Jelly Bean | 16 | 2.8% | 2.7% | -0.1 |
| 4.2.x | 17 | 4.1% | 3.8% | -0.3 | |
| 4.3 | 18 | 1.2% | 1.1% | -0.1 | |
| 4.4 | KitKat | 19 | 17.1% | 16.0% | -1.1 |
| 5.0 | Lollipop | 21 | 7.8% | 7.4% | -0.4 |
| 5.1 | 22 | 22.3% | 21.8% | -0.5 | |
| 6.0 | Marshmallow | 23 | 31.8% | 32.3% | 0.5 |
| 7.0 | Nougat | 24 | 10.6% | 12.3% | 1.7 |
| 7.1 | 25 | 0.9% | 1.2% | 0.3 |
As we can see, the aging Gingerbread and Ice Cream Sandwich versions remain stagnant with a total of 1.4% of all Google Play Android devices. Jelly Bean"s usage continues to shrink with a combined 7.6%, compared with last month"s 8.1%.
KitKat is still a major piece of the Android pie with 16%; however, that version of the operating system took the biggest loss, as it has done every month for over a year and a half now.
Lollipop saw a combined loss of 0.9, and Marshmallow pulled further ahead. It was just two months ago that the latter overtook the former in terms of usage. The continued growth of Marshmallow is interesting though, given that so many new devices are shipping with Nougat.
And that brings us to the latest version of Google"s mobile OS. Nougat has been on the market for a year, and still, it combines for just 13.5% of all Google Play devices. The latest version, 7.1, has been out for over 10 months, yet is still on just 1.2%.
Still, the next version of Android is right around the corner. Android O doesn"t have a name yet, but the final Developer Preview has been released.