The Android developers site has updated the targeted devices section and it shows Froyo taking in almost 60% of the pie. Android 2.3 Gingerbread‘s share has doubled within a month, which doesn’t actually mean much because it’s on less than 1% of all devices.
We’re still wondering if Honeycomb and further tablet-optimized versions of the OS will get its own chart once it’s in the hands of the consumer, as adding Android 3.0 to the existing chart may screw things up significantly. The OS has been forked with Honeycomb, now that we know that 3.0 won’t be making it to smartphones. That said, Android 2.4 Ice Cream Sandwich will likely be the “Honeycomb for phones”, just as we expected.
We’re definitely glad to see Android 2.2 as the dominant version of the pie, even if Gingerbread is really the place to be at this point. However, Android 2.1 Eclair is still going strong with 31.4% of all devices.
We’d like to see how the Galaxy S line up will affect the chart once all devices are upgraded to 2.2, but that could take a while. Devices like the Motorola Devour and Cliq XT won’t be getting anymore love in the upgrades department, so Android 1.5 and 1.6 will likely be around for some time. If the AT&T Xperia X10 ever sees an upgrade, we may see Android 1.6 get shaved down a bit, but we can’t imagine the handset has sold all that well that it will drastically change the chart.
Android devices become obsolete very fast these days and even though dual-core devices like the Atrix 4G are all the rage right now, we can only imagine how long it will take for dual-core CPUs in smartphones to become a standard.
I’d also like to see how many of the devices that aren’t on Froyo or above have custom user interface skins on top of them. Custom UIs have a tendency to slow the updating process and a chart would be interesting to see just how it affects the process. That said, we’re sure that some handset-makers wouldn’t be too happy to see that a majority of their skinned phones are to blame for significant percentages of outdated OS versions.
[Via: Android Developers]