By 
It’s been about 7 months since Google officially unveiled Ice Cream Sandwich to the world and it’s only now, we’re finally beginning to see Android 4.0 gain some traction in market share. It’s interesting because Android 4.0’s distribution numbers have almost doubled from March to mid-April’s paltry 2.9%, with results posted today showing ICS now running on 4.9% of Android devices currently in the wild. And even though those numbers may sound like small cakes to you, keep in mind that was over the course of 1 month. It will be interesting to see how big and fast this number will grow in the coming months as more devices are (slowly) updated to ICS and more devices are launching with the latest OS. What do you guys think? Are these results promising? Or embarrassing?
…thank you cm9!
I lean towards the latter. Dont see why the hell there are PLENTY of very capable devices out there running ICS via XDA and the carriers/OEMs are just BSing on getting it going officially.
XDA essentially gets rid of the middle-man (carriers) so it gets out faster. Plus, with XDA it doesn’t matter if there’s bugs (which there almost always is) or if the camera doesn’t work — that sorta stuff is to be “expected” when dealing with hobbyists
Yeah, but it’s still pretty sad to see hobbyists get ICS almost fully functional while companies with the power, profits, and experience of Samsung or HTC are so slow… and then add the delays of carriers…
Absolutely ridiculous it takes this long to get just under 5% to the latest OS. Yeah, I know I can root, but I shouldn’t have to; this is the only area where I think Apple does a better job.
Stratosphere owners like me can’t upgrade no matter whether we would be willing to go with an XDA/CM9 ROM or not. We were basically abandoned the moment the device was released in Oct.
wow.. 5% only?? … hopefully by summer’s end, we’ll see that number increase, cause I’m pretty sure “jelly bean” will be out in the fall/winter, and most devices will be playing catch-up again
No, we won’t. No, devices won’t be playing catch up. The only way those numbers will rise is when people’s contracts are up and they get a new phone with the new OS. Phone devs don’t care, and actually HATE updating current phones on the market. Once they are released, they want to move on to the next money maker.
if your relying on your carrier to do the updating for you. your dum.
root the phone and stop whining.
the number of phones with an ics rom avaliable are probably close to 35-45%
if not more. phones that go as far back as the evo have it, even earlier as the og droid has it.
get with the times, this is why android is better then apple, not worse.
” root the phone and stop whining. ”
So “rooting ” magically creates a new linux 3.x kernel for your phone?! Or a stable rom for that matter?
It’s ridiculous and not impressive at all…
It’s a little like this… Money
There are far too many handset manufactures out there that make money off of the handsets that they sell. The only way they’re going to make money is off the handsets, not software, not directly anyway, and therefore it behooves them to pump out as many different devices to suit as many people as possible to buy more phones. Apple doesn’t have this problem. They only make 1 phone. Bonus, they make the software too! There’s little margin on the phones, so they make all their money on software, that everyone needs, to run their phones. All they have to do is minor, and I do mean MINOR, hardware changes/advances to suit the masses. So the phone itself never has to change every year for it’s functionality whereas Androids have to change a lot from one software change to the next…. Except the Nexus AH-HA! Coincidence? No. What makes the problem worse is, with every iteration of the Android OS, there’s a massive overhaul of the programs needed to use them. If Phones/carriers don’t get together on this, you have a bunch of pissed off developers that have to tweak their apps every so often to keep up, and even worse, keep legacy versions updated to run on old versions of the OS. If I were an Android Dev, I would have said screw it long ago. Apple Dev’s only need to focus on making their apps better, not functional. Android Dev’s are quite the opposite. So in the end, it all comes down to money.
How awesome would it be if Google took Motorola by the horns and pumped out a real pure Android phone!? 1 phone, (per year) 1 up-gradable OS, killer specs. I’ll bet my salary that Moto would be profitable again in a year, and overtake Samsung in 3.
There’s a reason people call Apple overpriced, they make a HUGE margin on their hardware, not little.
The iPad only costs about $350 to make but they charge an extra 2 or 4 hundred dollars for their iPads.
The manufacturers make a huge profit on the hardware.
It’s embarrassing and not surprising at the same time. The one thing to consider is that this is really the first whole number phone update since Donut updated to Eclair (1.6 to 2.0/2.1). And there is a lot more complexity to the Android ecosystem now. It’s not surprising that it’s taking longer that previous updates…but it certainly feels too long.
Over the next couple months, this number should skyrocket, with the GSII variants getting updated.
I see what you did there.
That’s embarrassing, I guess get a nexus if you want your updates in a timely manner, shouldn’t be like that but it is
it’s really disappointing that it took so long to get to even 5%. Hopefully all the testing behind is worth it. It was a huge step for handset manufacturers and carriers since they go from v2 to v4.
i just got a new andoid razr when will i get ice cream sandwich i still have ginger bread
All the people complaining about how long it’s taking for Android 4 to get out in the wild don’t understand how complicated it is. Not just the software but the fact it has to just work on hundreds of different combinations of hardware.
btw. I upgraded to a custom version of ICS yesterday for the first time and it was worth the wait. Very impressed so far. I think it’s much better than Apple iOS now in almost every way.
http://youtu.be/NMiY1kSTHZw
I’m actually looking at the other end of the spectrum. It’s difficult for me to believe that there are still that many people on 1.5. If it’s only 100 million androids out there then that means 300,000 people are still rocking cupcake. How is that even possible?