Adoption of Android Jelly Bean continues to climb as we await the arrival of its successor, KitKat. The latest stats from Google’s developer dashboard reveal the mobile operating system is now installed on more than 45 percent of all Android devices as of September 5.
Collectively, Android Jelly Bean 4.1.x and 4.2.x is installed on 45.1 percent of all devices running the latest Google Play Store app. That’s an increase of 4.6 percent from last month’s figure of 40.5 percent. As we have seen in the past, however, Jelly Bean’s gains come at the expense of other versions.
Ice Cream Sandwich installs are down to just 21.7 percent, Honeycomb remained steady at 0.1 percent and Gingerbread installs fell to 30.7 percent. Froyo is also down to just 2.4 percent.
Even with Jelly Bean’s success, Android fragmentation is still a real problem and with KitKat waiting in the wings, the issue isn’t likely to remedy itself anytime soon. Handset manufacturers have traditionally dragged their feet in getting the latest updates ready for customers but when you consider the sheer amount of different Android phones on the market, it’s no wonder it takes so long.
At the same time, the majority of budget handsets still ship with outdated versions of Android, namely Gingerbread. Most phones that fall into this category will never see an update issued as the hardware isn’t speedy enough to run newer revisions.
