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Google’s updated their platform version distribution chart for the two week period ending November 3rd (yesterday). Things are pretty much as we’d expected – Gingerbread has taken the lead, but Froyo is still rocking the charts while Eclair continues to wither away (10%) and Honeycomb struggles to gain any ground.
Tons of devices are launching with Android 2.3 lately so it’s growth isn’t surprising. What is disappointing, however, is that Froyo is still around the 40% mark compared to Gingerbread’s 43%. Yes, once upon a time we did all buy phones with Android 2.2 preinstalled.
Unfortunately, many of those phones have yet to get an upgrade. Honeycomb versions are also the reverse of what we want to see as only a combined 1.9% are on that. While these charts aren’t the most accurate representation of the “state of fragmentation,” they’re as close as we can get. Find the full breakdown here.
1.9% of 190 million devices is 3.6 million which is 600K up since October. Not statospheric but not bad. Android percentages will always skew towards the lower end devices which will virtually always be phones.
This still shows the problem. I get sick fed up of running 2.2 when I am on a 2 year contract and should be supported PROPERLY for that time.
And if anyone tells me to root / custom rom / buy another phone (I have a nearly new dual core UK Atrix) I shall come round and bone your dog (stop sniggering, not like that!)
Stop what-ing?
sniggering. It’s like snickering.
Then what is sniggering exactly?
sniggering: present participle of snig·ger
Verb:Give such a laugh: “they snigger at him behind his back”.
Thx guys Sniggering is just a new one to me. I’ve heard snickering plenty of times.
@sQueezedhe:disqus
What’s “properly” in this context. Is your provider not fixing bugs or security issues? If not, then that’s indeed not getting proper support, but beyond that, updating to the newest OS release while perhaps nice, isn’t quite the same thing. Apps pretty much run on any of the modern(ish) releases, so it’s not like not getting a new OS version is all that limiting generally.
See, there is your issue. You bought a Motorola. In Europe. Bad move. You could have as well thrown your money in toilet and flushed it. Same result.
In short – if you buy Motorola phones in Europe, then it is your fault for doing so. Support for Motorola phones outside USA is non-existent.
I will simply tell you to live with your choice. Even after Motorola demonstrated its total disdain for its existing customers with the Milestone debacle, you chose to put your updates in their hands when you bought an Atrix.
Were you ignorant of Motorola’s terrible record with updates, or did you just see shiny new hardware and choose to substitute what you hoped for what you knew?
I would imagine 2.2 will drop significantly in a year when more 2 years contracts are up. But then people will be bitching there are still all these Gingerbread devices. So I guess it doesn’t really matter.
manufacturers should update there phones for 2 1/2 years after release to what ever the current version of android is then problem solved
First, you need to convince manufacturers to stop releasing crappy handsets that are barely useable on the current version of Android. Then you need to convince them that they don’t need to release 40 phones every year and that far less would suffice. Then I would say that’s totally doable.
The Ice Cream man cometh!
Yeah once 4.0 comes out then we will be able to tell how many Galaxy Nexus’s were sold.
If we could go to Vanilla UI’s then this issue would improve greatly. This is the biggest wrench in the Android mix
There should be two charts right now. One for tablets and one for phones. Since Honeycomb is a tablet-only version and the numbers of tablets compared to the number of phones is way skewed, it is actually encouraging that we are seeing anything other than <1% in the Honeycomb column.
As long as Honeycomb remains a tablet-only version of Android there should be two pie charts.
I wonder if most manufactures don’t really see the point in updating most to gingerbread when it didn’t really bring anything earth shattering to the table, and instead are focusing on ice cream sandwich? Or maybe the current crop of froyo devices in the manufacturers eyes are so obsolete they are going to let them rot and bank on people upgrading their devices anyway.
HOPEFULLY by 2 weeks from now there will be a little slice for ICS 4.0!!
Smh this is what will keep Android from fully dominating the mobile market. I admire Android(considered switching a few times), but this alone is a reason for a customer to turn to the completion.
Signed,
Apple Fanboy
well atleast android 1 is off the chart now… just have to deal with 1.5 and 1.6
Let’s not dismiss the fact that there are likely a TON of people that will buy their phone with whatever version of Android it came with and never end up updating. A lot of the people here at work are that way. In fact, I know a person who’s EVO is still on 2.1…
The distribution of Honeycomb will never get huge – especially not when all or almost all Honeycomb powered tablets are getting upgraded to ICS. Honeycomb is great – I run it on my Transformer; but ICS will bring soooooooo many more Apps since it’ll be both a phone and Table OS which will make everything better. If you’ve used Honeycomb you’ll see that ICS is based HEAVILY on Honeycomb so the transition is easy. 2012 is going to be the year of Android and ICS is going to be the reason. (Oh and the slew of new tablets that’ll be coming out – you’ll see Apple’s market share of tablet shrivel substantially.
Wheres 2.3.7???
Tablets still at less than 2% of the Android Market and still getting more resources thrown at them than their smartphone equivalent apps. Oh well, we march on.