Android Marshmallow hits 2.3% adoption in March, up from 1.2% in February, as 16-month-old Lollipop becomes the most used version
Abner Li / 9to5Google :
Context & Ripple Effects
Marshmallow's crawl to 2.3% repeats a familiar Google playbook: the release went out first to Nexus hardware in the October rollout to the Nexus 5, 6, 7, 9 and Player, leaving carrier and OEM devices waiting months behind. The same lag defined the previous cycle, when KitKat sat near 40% while Lollipop was still stuck under 0.1% a year into its life.
The milestone here is negative: Lollipop becoming the most-used version 16 months after launch means the Android base is settling on an aging release, not the current one.
First-order effects
- Lollipop overtakes KitKat as the most-installed Android version, so app developers' de facto minimum target shifts to a 16-month-old OS rather than Marshmallow.
- Marshmallow's doubling from 1.2% to 2.3% is concentrated on Nexus owners who received the update directly from Google, while the bulk of OEM devices remain on older builds.
Second-order effects
- Developers and service providers must keep supporting three-plus generations simultaneously, raising testing costs and slowing adoption of version-gated APIs across the ecosystem.
- Google's own new features become leverage over the fragmented base — the later rollout of Google Assistant to Nougat and Marshmallow devices shows how version distribution dictates which users get flagship services.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, each Android version needs roughly a year or more to reach meaningful share, pushing Google toward structural fixes — it later sped up distribution, with Android 10 reaching 100M devices five months after launch, and eventually reduced its monthly distribution dashboard updates as the metric lost urgency.
- Persistent fragmentation keeps security patching uneven across hundreds of millions of devices on old versions, sustaining pressure on Google and OEMs over update commitments.
The trend: Android version adoption is slowly compressing — from Lollipop's year-long stall to Marshmallow passing 10% within eight months and Android 10's faster ramp — but fragmentation remains the platform's defining constraint.