Android OS Adoption Rates

Google’s distribution numbers

Google releases these numbers every month to help us keep an eye on where the Android world is moving. While last month saw Oreo show up at 0.2% and modest gains for Nougat, the story is a little bit different this month. Nougat has jumped almost 3% across all versions while Oreo has moved from 0.2% to 0.3% this month alone!   While the gain Oreo makes each month are modest, Nougat had a huge month. We’re sure this jump was because more devices are being updated to or released with Nougat. It still trails Lollipop and marshmallow the gap is certainly closing fast. October saw Lollipop and Marshmallow hold 5.2% and 16.2% leads respectively over Nougat, where November saw those numbers drop off to 3.2% and 13.4% respectively. While those may not seem like big movements, keep in mind that Android is running 2 billion devices worldwide. Each small movement of the percentage represents tens of thousands, if not, hundreds of thousands of device upgrading to a new OS.

Estimates have said that within the first 12 months of each Android OS being released there always been a "lower penetration" for that particular version. Nougat has achieved just 14 percent penetration, while Jelly Bean, which came out in 2012, had 38 percent of the market share. With each year as it passes it appears, based on Google's figures and expert analysis, the percentage of people using Android's latest and greatest software is slowing down.

With Oreo and beyond, Google has decided to split off the device-specific code that's needed from each manufacturer from the main systems that underpin Android. By separating them into two parts it means, in theory, that manufacturers won't have to alter as much code to get the operating system to work on their own phones. If this is successful, more devices will be able to run the latest version of Android with little ease, bringing new features to users sooner than before.