New year, new month, new Android platform distribution numbers.
Google has posted its latest Android platform distribution stats, detailing which versions of Android were in use by all devices that accessed Google Play during the 7-day period ending on January 4. Android 6.0 Marshmallow grew a whole 0.2 percent from last month, finishing January with a 0.7 percent share. Meanwhile, Android Lollipop (both 5.0 and 5.1) grew nearly 3 percent to finish at 32.6 percent.
Moving on down the line, Android 4.4 KitKat fell 0.5 percent to finish the survey period with a 31.6 percent share, and Android Jelly Bean (4.1 through 4.3) dropped to 24.7 percent. Rounding out this list is Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich dropping to 2.7 percent, Android 2.3 Gingerbread falling to 3.0 percent, and Android 2.2 Froyo holding steady at 0.2 percent.
Android 6.0 didn’t grow much from December to January, but that’s not totally shocking since we didn’t see many new phones released to Marshmallow or existing phones updated to that OS. The good news is that at least Android Lollipop — a fairly recent release — grew quite a bit while all of the older versions continue to fall. Expect these trends to continue for another month or two while we wait for new flagship phones to be released with Marshmallow, like (hopefully) the Samsung Galaxy S7.