A report coming out of DigiTimes suggests that Google might be looking to launch Android 5.0 ‘Jelly Bean’ in the second quarter of this year. Honestly this seems a little far-fetched, but I understand the reasoning behind it. From the article, Google are hoping to better optimise the OS for tablets and netbooks and allow the device to go between Android and Windows 8 without having to shut down the device and start it up again.
DigiTimes also reports that hardware partners aren’t happy with the initial pick-up of Android 4.0 — only 1% of devices accessing the Android Market are on 4.0+ — so Google will be speeding up development of Android 5.0.
I’m taking this with a huge grain of salt. Instead I think it’s more plausible that Google will push an updated version of 4.0 ‘Ice Cream Sandwich’ with more optimisations for tablets, as they have said in the past that they were sticking to a yearly cycle of versions. I think it’s likely that in the coming days Google will respond to the speculation and set the record straight.
