Google has released official figures regarding the adoption rate of different versions of its Android operating system (OS) over all Android devices. The adoption rate of Android Lollipop is now 23.5 percent.
Google updated its Android distribution data for a seven-day period that ended on Oct. 5. The figures released by the company were collected by recording the number of active Android devices, which have pinged Google Play Store during the seven-day period.
The company released Android 5 Lollipop to Android devices in early November 2014 and the OS slowly made its way to many Android devices. However, the adoption rate of Lollipop remains low. The Android distribution data suggests that 15.6 percent of Android devices are running on Android 5.0 Lollipop, while only 7.9 percent of overall Android devices operate on Android 5.1 Lollipop.
The majority, or 38.9 percent, of Android devices are still running on Android 4.4 KitKat that Google released on Nexus devices in October 2013. For Android Jelly Bean, the overall adoption rate of all versions is 30.2 percent.
Google has started rolling out the latest Android 6.0 Marshmallow OS to select Nexus devices. The new OS will also be rolled out to other Android devices in the near term. However, the Android distribution data does not cover the new Android OS as it only started reaching Nexus devices on Oct. 5.
The adoption rate for Android Lollipop should have been high; however, the OS was plagued with many issues that may have led users to refrain from upgrading to that version of Android. Customer complaints ranged from Wi-Fi connectivity and overheating to performance and battery drain and more.
Many users also opted to downgrade to Android 4.4 KitKat due to issues in Android 5.0 and Android 5.1 Lollipop.
"I upgraded to Android 5 when it was first released, experienced issues when connected to my home Wi-Fi, and went back to KitKat hoping it would be fixed later. I upgraded again to 5.1 thinking it would be fixed and was presented with the same issues," complained a user on Reddit.
Android device owners can only hope that the latest Marshmallow update addresses all the problems that were seen in the previous version of the software.
The Android distribution data will probably see a trivial percent of Android users running Android 6.0 Marshmallow in November's data, but as more and more devices start getting the new OS on their handsets, the adoption rate of Android 6.0 Marshmallow may also increase in the coming months.
Photo: Jan Persiel | Flickr
