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 5, and shows declines in usage for all versions except the three newest releases (and 2.2 Froyo, which still clings on to life, at 0.1%) - but there's been very little growth for the latest version of the OS.
It's been three and a half months since Google released Android 7.0 Nougat, making it available to some of its Nexus and Pixel devices. The newer Android 7.1 release also debuted on its Pixel and Pixel XL flagship phones.
A month ago, Android 7.0 (including 7.1) was installed on just 0.3% of active Android devices. According to Google's latest data, that has since increased to just 0.4%. Remarkably, that indicates that the pace of the Nougat rollout is even slower than that of Android 6.0 Marshmallow last year; three months after Marshmallow's release, it was on 0.7% of active devices.
Of course, even Marshmallow's progress after three months was hardly impressive, but it's not exactly encouraging to see the newest version of the OS doing worse than its predecessor on that front. It's not that surprising though; manufacturers like LG and Sony have barely begun to upgrade their devices, while others such as Samsung and OnePlus have only recently started beta testing their Android 7.0 updates. Some, like Huawei, won't upgrade any of their devices until next year. Meanwhile, Google is already rolling out Android 7.1.1.
| Version | Codename | API | Last month | This month | Change |
| 2.2 | Froyo | 8 | 0.1% | 0.1% | / |
| 2.3.3 - 2.3.7 | Gingerbread | 10 | 1.3% | 1.2% | -0.1% |
| 4.0.3 - 4.0.4 | Ice Cream Sandwich | 15 | 1.3% | 1.2% | -0.1% |
| 4.1.x | Jelly Bean | 16 | 4.9% | 4.5% | -0.4% |
| 4.2.x | 17 | 6.8% | 6.4% | -0.4% | |
| 4.3 | 18 | 2.0% | 1.9% | -0.1% | |
| 4.4 | KitKat | 19 | 25.2% | 24.0% | -1.2% |
| 5.0 | Lollipop | 21 | 11.3% | 10.8% | -0.5% |
| 5.1 | 22 | 22.8% | 23.2% | 0.4% | |
| 6.0 | Marshmallow | 23 | 24.0% | 26.3% | 2.3% |
| 7.0 | Nougat | 24 | 0.3% | 0.4% | 0.1% |
But while Nougat struggles to gather momentum, Marshmallow is doing much better, rising by 2.3% compared with last month (although that growth is much smaller than last month, when it increased by 5.3%). At 26.3%, that now makes Marshmallow the single most widely used Android version, finally pushing the three-year-old 4.4 KitKat into second place.
Android 5.1 Lollipop is in a close third place on 23.2% - thanks to a 0.4% increase over last month - with version 5.0 trailing in a distant fourth on 10.8%.
Every other version of the OS, apart from the seemingly invincible 2.2 Froyo, dropped in usage compared with last month. But with few manufacturers upgrading their devices to the very latest versions in any significant numbers, it seems it may be a while before Android 7.0 Nougat sees any substantial growth in usage.
Source: Google Developers
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