A year since its rollout, Android 6.0 aka Marshmallow now runs on nearly a quarter of all Android devices.
According to the latest monthly data from Google, 24% of all Android devices it recently captured when they accessed the Play Store run on Android Marshmallow, a far cry from the privileged few that are lucky to be rocking the latest version of Android, Nougat.
Quite notably, the new Android 7.1 which runs only on Google’s new Pixel smartphones, does not make the cut in this month’s figures as its user base is quite negligible.
2-year-old Android Lollipop is still the most dominant version of Android with over a third of the pie at 34% while KitKat’s dominance slumped to just a quarter.
| [Android] Version | Codename | API | Distribution |
| 2.2 | Froyo | 8 | 0.1% |
| 2.3.3-2.3.7 | Gingerbread | 10 | 1.3% |
| 4.0.3-4.0.4 | Ice Cream Sandwich | 15 | 1.3% |
| 4.1.x | Jelly Bean | 16 | 4.9% |
| 4.2.x | " | 17 | 6.8% |
| 4.3 | " | 18 | 2.0% |
| 4.4 | KitKat | 19 | 25.2% |
| 5.0 | Lollipop | 21 | 11.3% |
| 5.1 | " | 22 | 22.8% |
| 6.0 | Marshmallow | 23 | 24.0% |
| 7.0 | Nougat | 24 | 0.3% |
With newer devices from now onwards launching with Android 7, Nougat’s fortunes are bound to change gradually over the next several months. In fact, if devices like the new Android One smartphone from General Mobile show up in good numbers, the tilt in Nougat’s favour may even be greater than we can foresee. But that’s a lot of ifs. Android device makers are notoriously slow when it comes to updating devices so many who have just received an upgrade to Marshmallow may be in for a long wait or never get the update at all.
