In brief: Google hasn’t been releasing Android distribution figures as regularly as it used to, having missed out March and skipping June. But the company has now unveiled July’s numbers, and the good news is that Oreo has finally hit double digits.
Since May, Android 8.0 Oreo has jumped 5.2 percent to 10.1 percent. Android 8.1, meanwhile, is up 1.2 points as it reaches 2 percent. They're not hugely impressive numbers, but Google will no doubt be pleased to see both versions almost double their userbase in two months—a feat helped by several new devices shipping with Oreo and the OS finally arriving on many of last year's flagships.
In terms of growth rate, the figures mean the latest version of Android is ahead of Nougat, which sat at 11.5 percent back in July 2017.
While it did fall 0.3 points, Android 7.0/7.1 Nougat is still the most popular version of Android with a 30.8 percent distribution. Marshmallow was down 2 points and is in second place with 23.5 percent. Lollipop, which came out in 2014, is third with 20.4 percent.
The data comes from devices that visited the Google Play store over a seven-day period ending July 23. Access requires Android 2.2 or higher, so anything running an OS older than this aren’t counted, neither are handsets without Google’s Store, which includes the numerous Android smartphones available in China. Any versions with less than 0.1 percent distribution, such as Honeycomb, aren’t included either, so Gingerbread will probably drop off the list soon.
Google also provided information on the screen size and pixel density of Android devices that accessed its store during the seven days. As usual, ‘normal’ was the most common size, while ‘extra-high’ was the most common type of pixel density.
