Google has finally released the numbers showing distribution comparisons of its recent operating systems. One number that stands out is that Android 9 Pie accounted for 22.6% of all devices as of this past August 2019. When put against earlier Android versions, Android 7 and 8, Android 9 update rate is twice as good(Android Oreo accounted for 8.9% of all Android devices just before Android Pie was released.) but that’s a very small number considering that iOS 13 is running on over half of all iPhones introduced in the last four years.
Nearly a Quarter of All Android Devices
22.6% gets even smaller now that Android 10 is barely two months old. Numbers aside, Google has done a relatively good job urging smartphone manufacturers to push security and software updates more quickly to users but the road is long courtesy of Android fragmentation.
Fruits from the labour of Project Treble
While making this announcement, Google patted itself on the back saying how its Project Treble technology has made it easier to update devices to the recent Android version. On the same day when Google launched Android 10 update to its Pixel series, two smartphone manufactures, Xiaomi and Essential got their Android 10 updates too. Android 10 beta is now available to relatively more devices – 18 phone models from 12 different companies compared to Android 9 Pie beta which only had 7 phone models form 7 different companies.
Another good thing from the chart is that Google doubled the number of devices updating to its most recent Android version.
To help increase adoption rates of Android 10, Google is requiring all new devices to launch with Android 10 already baked in if approved after January 31, 2020. This means smartphone manufacturers planning to release new phones next year to launch new devices with Android 10 instead of Android 9 Pie.
Google is also requiring that Digital Wellbeing be installed on all new devices plus giving number priority to its own gesture navigation forcing OEMs to hide their customized gesture navigation systems.
Smartphone manufacturers have taken up to themselves to start providing Android 10 updates to their respective devices such as Samsung that’s been pushing Android 10 update via their One UI 2.0.
Other smartphone companies like Xiaomi, OPPO, LG, Motorola have also promised to update their devices to Android 10 by the end of the year.
Project Mainline
Google also announced that Android 10 will come with Project Mainline which it introduced during this year’s Google I/O that distributes “important code changes” to specific internal OS components directly via Google Play Store to fasten Android 10’s update improvements.
“Project Mainline is to the core of the Android OS what Project Treble is to its foundation. It is a dramatic improvement in the velocity of updates of the OS components that fall under its umbrella.”
The Future
Google is content with the distribution numbers and considering that Android is a huge ecosystem, we can’t wait to see progress on Android 10’s adoption with Project Treble and Project Mainline.
