Google has updated its Android Platform Distribution numbers for the month of November, revealing that KitKat, which was released an year ago, is now powering over a third of mobile devices running the company’s mobile OS.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise given that KitKat’s market share has continued to rise over the past several months. As per the latest stats, Android KitKat is installed on 30.2 percent of devices that accessed the Play Store during the past week, compared to 24.5 percent in the month prior.
Version Codename API Distribution
2.2 Froyo 8 0.6%
2.3.3 – 2.3.7 Gingerbread 10 9.8%
4.0.3 – 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich 15 8.5%
4.1.x Jelly Bean 16 22.8
4.2.x – 17 20.8%
4.3 – 18 7.3%
4.4 KitKat 19 30.2%
Aside from KitKat, all other Android versions saw a dip in their adoption share. Although Jelly Bean, which was released back in 2012, remains the leading platform, its market share dropped to 50.9 percent from 53.8 percent.
Similarly, Ice Cream Sandwich’s market share came down to 8.5 percent from 9.6 percent, while Gingerbread slipped to single digits with 9.8 percent market share, down from 11.4 percent in September. All other versions of Android accounted for less than 1 percent share.
Google has also started rolling out Android 5.0 Lollipop, so it will be interesting to see how it affects KitKat’s market share moving forward.
It’s also worth mentioning that this data reflects devices running the latest Google Play Store app, which is compatible with Android 2.2 and higher.