KitKat now powering over a third of Android devices, Jelly Bean's adoption falls to 50 percent

Himanshu Arora

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Google has updated its Android Platform Distribution numbers for the month of November, revealing that KitKat, which was released an year ago, is now powering over a third of mobile devices running the company's mobile OS.

This shouldn't come as a surprise given that KitKat's market share has continued to rise over the past several months. As per the latest stats, Android KitKat is installed on 30.2 percent of devices that accessed the Play Store during the past week, compared to 24.5 percent in the month prior.

Version Codename API Distribution
2.2 Froyo 8 0.6%
2.3.3 - 2.3.7 Gingerbread 10 9.8%
4.0.3 - 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich 15 8.5%
4.1.x Jelly Bean 16 22.8
4.2.x - 17 20.8%
4.3 - 18 7.3%
4.4 KitKat 19 30.2%

Aside from KitKat, all other Android versions saw a dip in their adoption share. Although Jelly Bean, which was released back in 2012, remains the leading platform, its market share dropped to 50.9 percent from 53.8 percent.

Similarly, Ice Cream Sandwich's market share came down to 8.5 percent from 9.6 percent, while Gingerbread slipped to single digits with 9.8 percent market share, down from 11.4 percent in September. All other versions of Android accounted for less than 1 percent share.

Google has also started rolling out Android 5.0 Lollipop, so it will be interesting to see how it affects KitKat's market share moving forward.

It's also worth mentioning that this data reflects devices running the latest Google Play Store app, which is compatible with Android 2.2 and higher.

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Jelly Beans adoption has fallen? That doesn't make any sense.
Jelly Bean's percentage of factory implementation has gone down significantly due to its replacement, Kit Kat.
Adoption? Really? Cmon Man!
 
^ I agree with that.

Also, they'd get more adoption rate on KitKat if they'd only force manufactures to update for older models of phones as well. For example my LG Optimus G which hasn't had a single Android system update in 2 years.
 
I own a Samsung Galaxy S2. It came out in May of 2011. Samsung stopped releasing updates to it in January of 2013, less than 2 years later. This phone will forever be stuck on Android 4.1.2 unless I flash an unofficial ROM, like Cyanogenmod, to it. So, Samsung could get Kit Kat working on my phone, they just chose not to in an effort to get me to buy a newer phone. Which is why I'm likely going to buy a Nexus phone, despite it lacking a microSD slot. If you want the latest version of Android, it seems to be the best way to go.
 
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