A new Android version has arrived, and that means we can start watching paint dry. Per Google’s Platform Versions page, the latest and greatest version of the company’s mobile operating system took more than two months to hit a whopping 0.3 percent adoption.
Google started rolling out Android 7.0 Nougat to Nexus devices in August. To be fair, the company’s new Pixel phones, which ship with Android 7.1, haven’t been on sale for a month yet. Still, the latest major version of Android typically takes more than a year to become the most-used release, and Nougat’s story will likely be no different.
Here are the changes between October and November:
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- Android 7.0/7.1 Nougat (August 2016): Up 0.3 points to 0.3 percent
- Android 6.0 Marshmallow (October 2015): Up 5.3 points to 24.0 percent
- Android 5.0/5.1 Lollipop (November 2014, March 2015): Down 0.9 points to 34.1 percent
- Android 4.4 KitKat (October 2013): Down 2.5 points to 25.2 percent
- Android 4.1/4.2/4.3 Jelly Bean (July 2012, November 2012, and July 2013): Down 1.9 points to 13.7 percent
- Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (December 2011): Down 0.1 points to 1.3 percent
- Android 2.3 Gingerbread (December 2010): Down 0.2 points to 1.3 percent
- Android 2.2 Froyo (May 2010): Flat at 0.1 percent
The Platform Versions tool uses data gathered from the Google Play Store app, which requires Android 2.2 and above. This means devices running older versions are not included, nor are devices that don’t have Google Play installed (such as many Android phones and tablets in China, Amazon’s Fire line, and so on). Also, Android versions that have less than 0.1 percent adoption, such as Android 3.0 Honeycomb, are not listed.
For the sake of comparison, here’s the Android adoption chart for October:
The Android adoption order now stands as: Lollipop in first place, KitKat in second, Marshmallow in third, Jelly Bean in fourth, Gingerbread and ICS tied for fifth, and Froyo in last. Marshmallow will move up to second place this year, but the gold medal spot will elude it until sometime in 2017. Nougat will meanwhile barely make it to 1 percent.
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