Adoption Of Android 4.4 KitKat On The Rise But Jelly Bean Firmly On Top

Google has released the latest numbers regarding the adoption of its Android platform, revealing a rise in the number of devices running the latest two versions of the software.

In an Android Developers blog post measuring customer usage over a seven-day period ending 3 March, the company revealed that 2.5 percent of devices were now running Android 4.4 KitKat, the most recent version, an increase of 0.7 percent since the last set of figures in February.

The most popular version remains Jelly Bean, which is present on many mid-market devices, and whose three versions now account for 62 percent of all users, up from 60.7 percent last month with a total growth of eight percent. Android 4.1 is the most popular iteration of the software, running on 35.3 percent of devices, followed by Android 4.2 with 17.1 percent and Android 4.3 with 9.6 percent.

Growing popularity

The rise of Android 4.4 KitKat can be put down to consumers upgrading from older devices to new ones running the latest software. Many of the leading Android handsets available today run KitKat, including the HTC One and Sony Xperia Z1, as well as major upcoming releases such as Samsung’s Galaxy S5. Users of devices using Jelly Bean may also be able to upgrade to KitKat soon, which should boost its market share even more.

Behind Jelly Bean, the second most popular version of Android remains 2.3 Gingerbread, which is present on 19 percent of devices, a fall from 21.1 percent last month as it lost share to newer software. In third place was Android 4.0.3/4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich, which was installed on 15.2 percent of devices, a fall of 0.9 percent as it also lost share to Jelly Bean.

The single 3.x version of Android, 3.2 Honeycomb, now runs on only 0.1 percent of devices. Google noted in its blog that it has stopped including versions older than Android 2.2, such as Android 1.6 Donut and Android 2.1 Éclair, in its statistics, due to their lack of support for the latest Google Play Store app.

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