The world’s smallest violin is playing for Android Honeycomb tonight as a study reveals that the tablet-optimized OS only claims a one percent share among versions of Android. Lackluster Android tablet sales throughout the year make this less of a shock, but it still is a little startling.
The Chitika ad network wanted to conduct this study to determine which versions of Android have had the biggest impact on overall growth. Android 2.3 Gingerbread takes the cake with 65 percent of market share, while 28 percent of users are still stuck on 2.2 Froyo. Keep in mind, these numbers are based on this company’s ad inventory but it does give a good example or what devices are actually being used by real people.
Gingerbread and Froyo make up 93 percent of all versions of Android. After that, the numbers really start to shrink, as 2 percent of Chitika’s Android impressions went to Ice Cream Sandwich, currently found only on the Galaxy Nexus. Another 2 percent of (presumably unhappy) Android users remain on Android 2.0 Donut. Finally, we reach Honeycomb for tablets, which has only a single percent of the pie.
Meanwhile, people can’t get enough iPads. Apple sold 11.1 million of them last quarter, and even BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and Android handset users have their eyes on them.
The worst part is that manufacturers don’t really have a choice because the only major licensed OS for tablets is Android Honeycomb. HP’s webOS has gone open source, but realistically, it’s pretty much just gone. It’s not so much that Honeycomb is bad, it’s just that in combination with hardware, the resulting devices don’t have any good answers for the fundamental question coming from consumers: “Why should I buy this over an iPad?”
Google is hoping Ice Cream Sandwich changes that in 2012.
[via BGR]