Android Marshmallow adoption passes 15% after 10 months

Android Nougat may be just around the corner, but everyone is still watching Android Marshmallow slowly grow. After taking four months to hit 1 percent adoption, and eight months to pass 10 percent, the latest version of Android took another two months to hit 15 percent adoption, according to Google’s Platform Versions page.

Android Marshmallow gained 1.9 percentage points to hit 15.2 percent, though it’s still in fourth place. The latest version of Android typically takes more than a year to become the most-used release, and unless something major happens in the next two months, Marshmallow’s story will be no different.

Here are the changes between July and August:

• Android 6.0 Marshmallow (October 2015): Up 1.9 points to 15.2 percent
• Android 5.0/5.1 Lollipop (November 2014, March 2015): Up 0.4 points to 35.5 percent
• Android 4.4 KitKat (October 2013): Down 0.9 points to 29.2 percent
• Android 4.1/4.2/4.3 Jelly Bean (July 2012, November 2012, and July 2013): Down 1.1 points to 16.7 percent
• Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (December 2011): Down 0.1 points to 1.6 percent
• Android 2.3 Gingerbread (December 2010): Down 0.2 points to 1.7 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 (which includes 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 July:

The Android adoption order remains unchanged: Lollipop in first place, KitKat in second, Jelly Bean in third, Marshmallow in fourth, Gingerbread in fifth, ICS in sixth, and Froyo in last. Marshmallow will definitely move up to third place this year, and maybe even second. But the gold medal spot will elude it until sometime in 2017.