Jelly Bean and ICS continue to grow as Gingerbread diminishes

Android 2.3 Gingerbread continues to reign supreme as the most-used Android version, but its share is slowly starting to go down as newer operating systems such as Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean swiftly grow in popularity.

This information has been released by Google, as it continues to follow the monthly tradition of releasing Android distribution data. For those not in the know, this is data about the relative number of active devices running a given version of the Android platform. The data is based on the number of Android devices that have accessed Google Play within a 14-day period.

According to the latest statistics, the percentage of Android devices running Ice Cream Sandwich has grown to 27.5 percent, while the percentage of devices running Jelly Bean has grown to over 6 percent across both its versions – Android 4.1 and Android 4.2. The increased adoption of Jelly Bean can definitely be attributed to the launch of the new range of Nexus devices and their success across the world.

Ice Cream Sandwich adoption continues to grow.

Gingerbread continues to dominate a large portion of the pie with just over 50 percent devices running on it. However, it has lost its share by around 3 percent since the statistics were calculated last month, when it stood at 53.9 percent compared to the current 50.9 percent.

Smartphone manufacturers such as HTC and Samsung have also contributed to the rise of Ice Cream Sandwich and the older version of Jelly Bean – Android 4.1 as they have begun selling handsets as well as dishing out the operating system to a handful of devices.

One of the major contributors to the jump in the distribution of Android 4.1 is Samsung, which rolled out Jelly Bean to the Galaxy S III recently, and many users of the handset have upgraded their device to run on this OS.

Google have also rolled out Jelly Bean for its older Nexus devices such as the Nexus 7 and Galaxy Nexus, which definitely contributes to the rapid growth of Android Jelly Bean.

The usage of Froyo decreased in the last month by around 2 percent and it is now used on 10.3 percent of Android devices across the world, as opposed to the 12 percent share it had last month.

Last month, the number of Android devices running version Ice Cream Sandwich was 25.8 percent, and 2.7 percent of all Android devices ran Jelly Bean.

The slow growth in the number of Jelly Bean devices is not so surprising considering the low number of devices compatible with the operating system, but the snail’s pace at which Ice Cream Sandwich adoption is growing indicates how big a problem fragmentation is for the Android platform. Unlike Apple's devices, there is too much of a variation in Android devices' hardware for manufacturers to simply push an update once Google makes it available. It also seems casual users aren’t too bothered with updating their devices either.