After announcing a new tablet running Android 6.0 this morning, it’s possible we may see wider adoption of Android Marshmallow – but for this month the rise in adoption of Google’s latest version of their mobile OS is looking pretty slow.
Android 6.0, which was only introduced into the Android Distribution statistics last month has seen a small 0.2% rise to sit at just half a percent after a month of availability – still putting it ahead of Froyo which remains at 0.2%. The rest of the eco-system is up and down, with older versions showing slight drops in Gingerbread and Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean and even KitKat, while Lollipop adoption for both 5.0 and 5.1 versions grew off the back of those declines.
The basis for these reports is of course so developers can target which versions of Android to develop for and the growing trend appears to be towards KitKat and upwards to capture the majority of the Android market. The lesson here is, if your device isn’t up to that level – Christmas is coming, so maybe look into what Santa can leave under the tree for you this year.
As usual, here’s the numbers in an easily digestible table compared to last month:
| Android Version | November | December |
| Android 2.2 (Froyo) | 0.2% | 0.2% |
| Android 2.3.3 – 2.3.7 (Gingerbread) | 3.8% | 3.4% |
| Android 4.0.3 – 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) | 3.3% | 2.9% |
| Android 4.1.x (JellyBean) | 11.0% | 10.0% |
| Android 4.2.x (JellyBean) | 13.9% | 13.0% |
| Android 4.3 (JellyBean) | 4.1% | 3.9% |
| Android 4.4 (KitKat) | 37.8% | 36.6% |
| Android 5.0 (Lollipop) | 15.5% | 16.3% |
| Android 5.1 (Lollipop) | 10.1% | 13.2% |
| Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) | 0.3% | 0.5% |
