Android 4.4, codenamed KitKat by its makers at Google, has been out for six months now. What would you expect of an operating system 6 months after launch? Wider adoption right? Apparently that is not the case for Android 4.4 as it has been for the various point iterations of its predecessor, Jelly Bean. Fragmentation occassioned by older low specced devices and delays both on the side of manufacturers and carriers have combined to deny Google’s latest and greatest update the bigger share of the pie it so deserves. A day after Android 4.4.3 which is a minor point update to the 4.4.2 in circulation, started seeding to Nexus, Motorola and Google Play edition devices, Android distribution numbers for the just ended May are out.
KitKat is slowly gaining traction as it rose close to 14% from a meagre 5% same time last month while Jelly Bean was the affected one by that rise as it dropped its share of the pie to just under 60% of all the devices that accessed the Google Play Store over a period of 7 days ending yesterday. This is occasioned by the number of devices that were running Jelly Bean that have finally received updates to KitKat hence pushing the latter up at the expense of the former. ICS devices also declined in number as age catches up with the 3 year old OS version.
Of interest though is the eventual phasing out of the tablet-centric Android 3.x Honeycomb which had stuck at 0.1% for a while with no signs of budging. However, the ghost of the aged Android 2.x OS versions will still be around for a while as Gingerbread still has a significant presence and won’t be disappearing from the above chart soon.
| Android Version | Codename/Dessert Name | Distribution |
| 2.2 | Froyo | 0.8% |
| 2.3 | Gingerbread | 14.9% |
| 3.x | Honeycomb | xx |
| 4.0 | Ice Cream Sandwich | 12.3% |
| 4.1 | Jelly Bean | 29.0% |
| 4.2 | “ | 19.1% |
| 4.3 | “ | 10.3% |
| 4.4 | KitKat | 13.6% |
