Nougat surpasses Marshmallow as the most popular version of Android

[Polycount]

Android 7.0 Nougat has been steadily climbing as far as user distribution goes. Back in September, the mobile operating system surpassed KitKat as the third most popular version of Android and last month it crept past Lollipop to become the second most popular Android version.

Now, Nougat has finally unseated Marshmallow as the most popular Android version in use right now, according to 9to5Google. The popular mobile OS now lays claim to a whopping 28.5 percent of Android phones, beating Marshmallow by about 0.4 percent.

Android 8/8.1 Oreo, on the other hand, sits at a mere 1.1 percent distribution. While this is a small 0.8 percent increase over January's numbers, it still marks Oreo as one of the least-used Android operating systems out there.

As we've noted in the past, fragmentation is hitting Google's new OS particularly hard. Google has attempted to rectify this by rolling out the lightweight Android Go mobile OS for lower-end phones but it hasn't served to improve Oreo's user numbers much just yet.

To complicate matters further, Android phone makers have been slow once again to roll out the latest updates to smartphones in their lineup. Indeed, some have chosen to roll the update out to only their newest flagship devices, leaving owners of even slightly older Android smartphones in the dust.

Apple's latest iOS 11 update is a different story entirely, sitting at 65 percent distribution as of January 18.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/73129-nougat-surpasses-marshmallow-most-popular-version-android.html

 

[p51d007]

Why the slow adoption? Simple! Carriers & manufacturers won't update the devices.
And why not? Up to now, most people toss their phones for "new" ones every 12-24 months,
buying into the new is better argument, but, as speed increases don''t really give you an improvement,
as display improvements don't "pop" like they use to, as camera gimmicks don't impress people,
most are (hopefully) not willing to spend upwards of 800-1000 dollars or more, even on a zero interest
payment plan, and, will be hanging onto their phones a little longer. Unless something truly INNOVATIVE
comes along, maybe people will hang onto phones.
If project "treble" takes hold, the core OS & patches won't be up to the carrier/manufacturers to update the device, just go to the play store, to grab the files.

 

[tipstir]

As an Android Developer the OS is not completely sound like with any other OS like Microsoft Windows OS we all know that use this OS know it has a lot of bugs. But we all have hope it will be stable one day. iOS like Android OS based on Linux OS Kernel. These 3 OS like MS Windows OS still a work-in-progress. Sure one day it will be stable. Why release so many different versions of the OS or just simply fix it. Good question. The answer lines in "WHAT'S NEW!". No one wants to hear "PATCH FIX!" So they release a new version with new tech ideas. I see Oreo 8 not really talked about but it a lot better than 6 or 7 was. Those too were so buggy it wasn't funny to say otherwise. Sure new features are always the best selling point in releasing new OS. But one things these companies do they don't want to support the older versions of the OS after a while where the newer version is out. Then so many still rather use the older version instead of the newer one. In time we're all on the same version. Oreo 8 I am on now coming from 7.xx in Android.