Jelly Bean installs surpass Ice Cream Sandwich for the first time

Shawn Knight

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Google has revealed that for the first time, the number of active Android 4.1 and 4.2 Jelly Bean installations have surpassed those of Ice Cream Sandwich. It’s good news for Google as the platform has faced fragmentation issues for quite some time.

Installations of Jelly Bean increased 3.4 percent to 28.4 percent as of April. The increase in Jelly Bean installs comes partially as a result of decreased Ice Cream Sandwich installs – down 1.8 percent to 27.5 percent, according to data collected from devices visiting the Google Play Store.

jelly bean ice cream sandwich android google android 4.0

Adoption of Jelly Bean has increased substantially just in the last two months. Back in early March, only 16.5 percent of devices were running a variant of Jelly Bean compared to 28.4 percent, the most recent data available. Jelly Bean can credit much of its reach to the success of Samsung’s Galaxy SIII smartphone and with the latest iteration now hitting the streets, it likely won’t be long before it overtakes Gingerbread as the top Android install.

Android 2.3 Gingerbread still maintains a strong following at 38.5 percent. That’s down from 44.1 percent in March but it’s still a significant figure considering Gingerbread first dropped in December 2010. One of the reasons that Gingerbread is still widely used has to do with the fact that it still ships on lower-end feature phones. Individuals on a budget typically hold on to a handset for much longer than someone dead-set on having the latest and greatest each year.

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Almost 40% on Gingerbread? Google should be ashamed of this. The difference between ICS and JB is pretty negligible in the grand scheme of things. Literally evey Windows Phone is either 7.8 or 8.0. Every iPhone is on 6.0+. This, in turn, is pathetic. And the fact that they seem proud of these numbers paints a grim picture on how insignificant of an issue Google thinks this is.

They seriously need to step up. They have to threaten OEMs by saying they won't allow Google Play access if the store detects a particular phone model on an older system version. This will force OEMs to update their respective Android flavors. HTC comes to mind, quite possibly having the worst update track record out of the most popular OEMs.
 
4.2 successfully wrecked my Transformer Infinity. Ever since that update, it has been responding with severe lag. Also: the motion control to navigate pages is completely stupid or it's not calibrated for the Infinity because I can't navigate pdfs very well at all anymore. I wish I had the time to rollback to 4.1.
 
I don't care which version I use as long as it works properly. Hell I don't even know what version my S3 is on now. It makes no difference to me.
 
Almost 40% on Gingerbread? Google should be ashamed of this.

I still have Gingerbread in my HTC Incredible. I don't see any reason to upgrade if it works great and smooth. All I use phone are making call, text, email and calendar. That's it.
 
Almost 40% on Gingerbread? Google should be ashamed of this. The difference between ICS and JB is pretty negligible in the grand scheme of things. Literally evey Windows Phone is either 7.8 or 8.0. Every iPhone is on 6.0+. This, in turn, is pathetic. And the fact that they seem proud of these numbers paints a grim picture on how insignificant of an issue Google thinks this is.

They seriously need to step up. They have to threaten OEMs by saying they won't allow Google Play access if the store detects a particular phone model on an older system version. This will force OEMs to update their respective Android flavors. HTC comes to mind, quite possibly having the worst update track record out of the most popular OEMs.

Don't blame Google or OEM's, blame Open Source software. This is exactly how Linux on the desktop is handled. Fragmented out the wazoo. Now if only the guys developing the Linux distros could come together and focus on one or two instead of 25, and support them for longer than 6-9 months, it could actually gain double digit marketshare. But that won't happen, because that goes against the whole Open thang.
 
Almost 40% on Gingerbread? Google should be ashamed of this. The difference between ICS and JB is pretty negligible in the grand scheme of things. Literally evey Windows Phone is either 7.8 or 8.0. Every iPhone is on 6.0+. This, in turn, is pathetic. And the fact that they seem proud of these numbers paints a grim picture on how insignificant of an issue Google thinks this is.

They seriously need to step up. They have to threaten OEMs by saying they won't allow Google Play access if the store detects a particular phone model on an older system version. This will force OEMs to update their respective Android flavors. HTC comes to mind, quite possibly having the worst update track record out of the most popular OEMs.
Most of them are in third world like China, India, and on cheap Android phones.which don't have plan for upgrading. My old LG Thrill 4G even updated to ICS 4.0 last March (from Froyo, then Gingerbread).
 
Some of us want to wait before updating so that others can deal with bugs and problems. In any case I would want to know if there are any advantage with the new OS before updating. I am also tempted to root my phone when the contract period is over which will be in a few months.
 
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