'Ice Cream Sandwich' powers 1.6 percent of Android devices
Android 4.0 'Ice Cream Sandwich' was publicly released on 19 October 2011. But nearly five months down the line, this operating system powers only 1.6 percent of Android devices, according to data collected by Google.
The data only covers up to March 5, so it doesn't cover the entire five-month period of the release yet. This figure is up from 0.6 percent back in January.
The data also shows how fragmented Android is, and how far in the past some of the users are stuck. 62 percent of Android devices are running Android 2.3--2.3.7 'Gingerbread' that released in December 2010, while another 25 percent are running Android 2.2 'Froyo' which was released in May 2010.
Android 2.1 'Eclair,' released October 2009, still powers 6.6 percent of devices, which is more than run Android 3.0 'Honeycomb' and Android 4.0 'Ice Cream Sandwich' combined.
The historical data chart shows just how bad Google's problem with fragmentation has become.
Google may be seeing 850,000 new Android device activations per day but it seems that these are primarily devices running older releases of the Android platform. It's also likely that adoption of Android 4.0 is being slowed because handset makers and carriers are painfully slow getting the update out to customers with handsets that can run it.
Image credit: Google.
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