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.
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.