The numbers are in and it’s official, Jellybeans are taking over the world……nearly!
Earlier this year Google announced that they had hit 1 billion Android activations which, looking at the table below, means that over 480 million devices are now on Android Jellybean.
| Version | Codename | API | Distribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2.2 | Froyo | 8 | 2.2% |
| 2.3.3 – 2.3.7 |
Gingerbread | 10 | 28.5% |
| 3.2 | Honeycomb | 13 | 0.1% |
| 4.0.3 – 4.0.4 |
Ice Cream Sandwich | 15 | 20.6% |
| 4.1.x | Jelly Bean | 16 | 36.5% |
| 4.2.x | 17 | 10.6% | |
| 4.3 | 18 | 1.5% |
The problem that Google have is that there are 3 different versions of Jellybean and only 1.5% of devices are on the latest iteration, 4.3
There are still 20.6% of devices running Ice Cream Sandwich and 28.5% running Gingerbread. This means that as many devices are running older variants of Android than are running the current(ish) release.
The figures are about to get even murkier with the release of Android 4.4 KitKat although there have been several hints that the latest version will be easier to integrate with older devices. Whether or not manufacturers will want to bother with that though is another matter entirely.
The real question that this all leads to is does it really matter what version of Android your handset is running?
With Google Play services, Google Games and the other major Google apps all being able to be updated independently, the differences in the versions are actually quite small. You’d have a a hard job telling a device running Android 4.1 from version 4.3 unless you are a complete expert.
So fragmentation is alive and well within the Android ecosystem, but does it matter anymore?