According to the latest Google Play distribution data for the seven-day period ending July 11, the number of Android Marshmallow-based devices has gone up to 13.3 percent – showing a steady rise – while the share of Android Lollipop and Android KitKat powered devices is dropping gradually.
Google’s Android Marshmallow version, which was released last year, was last month running on 10.1 percent, which means there has been a rise of 3.2 percent in a month. To recall, Android Marshmallow in May was running on 7.5 percent active Android devices.
Marshmallow-powered devices have definitely increased in recent months but the growth has still been really slow. To compare, Android 6.0 Marshmallow finally made it to 1 percent of active devices in February, five months after its release to Nexus devices.
The latest data reveals that Android Lollipop has a total share of around 35.1 percent of active Android devices (with Android 5.0 Lollipop running on 14.3 percent of devices and Android 5.1 version at 20.8 percent) that check into Google Play compared to 35.4 percent reported at the beginning of May – a minor decrease of 0.3 percent in roughly a month. The Android Developers’ webpage shows that Android KitKat version is going down steadily on the charts and now powers 30.1 percent devices compared to 31.6 percent last month – a decrease of 1.5 percent.
Android Jelly Bean has a combined share of 17.8 percent – falling 1.1 percent from June’s 18.9 percent. Android 4.0.x or Ice Cream Sandwich, in Google’s latest numbers, registered a share of 1.7 percent, down 0.2 percent from last month. Android Gingerbread (v2.3.3-2.3.7) and Android 2.2 Froyo’s device distribution shares are 1.9 percent (2 percent last month) and 0.1 percent (same as last month) respectively in the charts.