Android’s distribution numbers for March: KitKat on the rise, while Gingerbread slowly dies
It’s time once again for Google to update us on the current state of Android. Posted today to the Android Developers page, these stats are a way for Android devs to see the percentage of Android devices — and the versions of Android they’re running — that have recently visited the Google Play Store. No point in building an app optimized for Froyo when nobody is using it, right?
To make things easier to view at a glance, here are this month’s numbers as compared to February 2014 (previous month).
Android versions February –> March
- KitKat: 1.8% –> 2.5%
- Jelly Bean: 60.7% –> 62%
- Ice Cream Sandwich: 16.1% –> 15.2%
- Gingerbread: 20% –> 19%
As we can see, KitKat made a sizeable jump as more and more Android OEMs continue upgrading many of the last year’s flagship devices to Android 4.4 KitKat. We’re still in the process of watching that play out, so we’ll more than likely need another month before the Ones and GS4’s of the world are completely updated. Don’t forget all those new flagships scheduled to launch over the next few months should have that number spiking, so watch out.
Looking at Jelly Bean numbers, we really hate to lump them in with each other as there are some pretty big differences when moving from 4.1.x to 4.3 (as any Android enthusiast will tell you). We did see that 4.1.x too a slight dip from 35.5% in Feb, to 35.3% this month. We’re sure this was likely due to devices being upgraded to later versions of Jelly Bean, as 4.2.x and 4.3 continued to rise — and that’s a good thing.
Our favorite number? Watching the now ancient Android 2.3 Gingerbread drop down to 19% of active Android devices using Google Play. Once again, these numbers do not account for off-Androids like the Nokia X or Amazon HDX tablets which use alternative app stores and services than Google’s own.