Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is currently occupying a smidge under 16 per cent of Android devices, more than nine months after the software made its debut in mid-November.
The disappointingly low figure comes courtesy of Google's distribution stats, with visits to the Google Play store, and the operating system that visiting devices are running, tallied over a two-week period up to 1 August.
Meanwhile Android 2.3 Gingerbread is still king, running on just under 61 per cent of Android kit, while the all-new version 4.1 Jelly Bean is on a minuscule 0.8 per cent of Android gear.
Ice Cream Sandwich crept over 10 per cent of Android devices at the start of July, showing that the number of gadgets in the robot-powered pool running the software is increasing at about 6 per cent per month -- so it should overtake Gingerbread by Christmas.
But with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, Ice Cream Sandwich is no longer the latest edition. The stats show that when it comes to updates, Android as a whole moves at a sluggish pace. While ambitious tinkerers and those who can afford to buy the latest gear are treated to up-to-date editions, manufacturers have dragged their heels when it comes to updating existing smart phones and tablets.
Introduced back in November with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Ice Cream Sandwich offers features such as face unlock and a slick multi-tasking system. Its successor, Jelly Bean, brings a bumped-up frame rate and goodies such as Google Now, which offers eerily pertinent information to you based on your search history and location.
What version of Android are you sporting? Have you been left waiting for an update, or are you happy with the current pace of upgrades? Tell me in the comments or on our Facebook wall
Image credit: developer.android.com
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Comments 6
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anonymous 2 August, 2012 13:58
iOS is the way forward thats why..
anonymous 2 August, 2012 14:11
The manufacturers are solely to blame.
My Samsung Galaxy S2 lasted 15 minutes before being infuriated by Samsungs awfully out of date firmware and diabolical alterations to Google's OS.
Currently running an experimental build of Jelly Bean... I'll never go back to a manufacturers build.
bizmobile 2 August, 2012 14:22
in my eyes, its people who cannot be bothered to update. Mainly because they don't know how to do it. everyone is still mad about the samsung galaxy ace range. they all are on 2.3 and customers are happy with that.
@bizmobile
anonymous 2 August, 2012 15:36
After a heads up from dripper yesterday I updated my Samsung Galaxy tab 10.1 from android 3.2 (honeycomb) to android 4.0.4 ICS (Icecream Sandwich), so that's been to updates since I got my tablet at the start of the year (started with android 3.1)
- if I get Jelly Bean android 4.1 I suspect its going to be my galaxy S3 first where the google now will be more useful then on a tablet.
the big question is how many people out there thats still got windows phone 6 instead of the windows phone 7 or even 7.5
ace9988 2 August, 2012 17:03
i bet these figures are going up just based on the fact that ICS devices are selling rather than people updating because a very small amount of people have actually updated their phone.
anonymous 8 August, 2012 01:42
On my old phone (HTC Desire) on Orange I was prompted to upgrade to upgrade to Android 2.1, although it was still months after 2.1 came out. The delay was jointly HTC stamping their mark on it followed by Orange altering that further still to add their useless apps.
That was the last official upgrade released by either HTC or Orange even though I've been running ICS on it via CyanogenMod. The hardware was perfectly capable of running it smoothly and it was a good experience. There was only one issue with the ROM which I believe was a porting issue rather than incompatible hardware (no video recording).
The problem as I see it is that it is not profitable for the manufacturers to release updates to old phones. They need people to buy the latest and greatest to make more money. So they delay as long as they can get away with it in the hope that people get impatient and just buy a new one. Sadly people do that so they have no reason to stop.
I really like Android but I can see it being dragged into failure by this. In an ideal world the open source model should work well but relying on third parties to distribute it who actively have no interest in pushing out updates fast breaks everything. I hope Google decide to relaunch their own handset like at the start.
Last weekend I finally upgraded to the Samsung Galaxy Ace 2. It's only been out a few months but comes with Gingerbread, now two versions out of date... Samsung said in May that it would be upgradable to ICS but haven't mentioned it since and their is no sign of it coming out anytime soon. Someone has worked out how to root it now and I'm hoping ROMs will start appearing soon. It's likely I'll be running a stable form of Jellybean on it via ROMs before Samsung get their ICS version out.
In their favour though, Orange have tacked on none of their own apps or even branded the case this time.