The latest Android Distribution numbers for April paint a not so good picture of the Android ecosystem. The numbers show that the current publicly available version, Android Oreo, has a market share of 4.6%. This means that this version of Android that has been out for about 7 months is installed in less than 5% of all Android devices. This is not a surprise as we have seen this over and over again, adoption of the latest version of Android has never been that high.
The reason for the slow adoption has something to do with the device manufacturers. Most of them are yet to push Android Oreo to their devices that can and should support the update. Some manufacturers may even decide not to update most of their current devices as they release newer smartphones. This is especially so with entry level brands that we mostly have in Kenya. Most of these manufacturers are in competition to be the first ones to bring the latest features to the market and supporting older devices is not usually in their agenda.
As more and more devices come into the market, I expect this number to keep going up and hopefully by next month when talking about Android Oreo, its adoption should be above 5%.
Nougat is Still King
Android Nougat is the most popular version of Android with a market share of 30.8%. This is a slight bump from a couple of months back when its market share stood at 28.5%. We have seen a handful of new smartphones released this year with Android Nougat so the number going up is not strange at all. Following Nougat is Android Marshmallow with a market share of 26%. This number has been going down and this makes perfect sense, most devices running Marshmallow got updated and users who own devices that are still running Marshmallow are upgrading to newer phones.
Some of the other Android versions still on this list include Lollipop with a market share of 22.9%, KitKat at 10.5%, Jelly Bean at 4.5% while Ice Cream Sandwich and Gingerbread at 0.4% an 0.3% respectively.
Also Read: Introducing The Tecno F Series, The First Tecno Phones Running Android Oreo (Go Edition)
