Android platform distribution statistics updated: .6-percent or around a million devices on ICS
The latest Android platform versions distributions chart was announced yesterday after the Android Developers' website collected data for two weeks, and the share results reaped a few surprising figures.
Context & Ripple Effects
The distribution chart lands against a backdrop of long-running fragmentation anxiety — Technologizer warned back in November 2010 that the worst Android fragmentation was yet to come, and this data point is the kind of evidence that debate feeds on. It also arrives amid mixed signals about the platform's momentum: Gartner had Android above 50% of Q3 2011 smartphone sales and Kantar showed it dominating the UK market, yet ComScore's MobiLens data flagged an uncharacteristic slowing of US growth in late December.
First-order effects
- Developers reading the Android Developers' dashboard see an installed base of roughly a million Ice Cream Sandwich devices — 0.6% — meaning new apps must still target the older versions that make up the other 99%+ of the fleet.
- The figure sits awkwardly next to Google's own report of 3.7 million device activations on December 24–25 alone, underscoring that holiday sales are overwhelmingly running pre-ICS software.
Second-order effects
- Handset makers and carriers face renewed scrutiny over update pipelines: with the newest version stuck under 1%, the gap between Google's release cadence and what ships on devices becomes a visible competitive liability against rivals like Apple and RIM already pressured by Android's UK gains.
- Slowing US growth per ComScore gives carriers and OEMs less cover to defer upgrades, since version stagnation is now measurable in public data every refresh cycle.
Third-order effects
- If each new Android release takes quarters rather than weeks to reach even single-digit share, Google comes under structural pressure to shorten the path from its own code to consumer devices — whether through measurement changes or tighter control of updates — or accept that its scale and its software currency will keep diverging.
The trend: Android's market-share dominance is increasingly decoupled from the version profile of its installed base, making Google's monthly distribution chart the recurring scoreboard for the fragmentation problem.