Google have today released the Android distribution figures for December with Oreo experiencing a slightly bigger increase and Nougat increasing more yet again.
Just as we saw last month, this month there is once again a drop across the board for all versions of Android below 7.0 with Nougat increasing from 20.6% to 23.3%. Android 8.0 Oreo was just 0.3% last month but now it has almost doubled to 0.5%.
With many manufacturers currently beta testing Oreo ROMs and some new phones releasing with Oreo we expect this to change dramatically in the next couple of months. As these updates roll out to the more populous places such as China and India we will see changes in this graph.
Lollipop and Marshmallow are still the most abundant versions but Nougat is gaining ground quickly as people upgrade to newer devices — remember the mid-range and lower end devices form a large part of this graph and most of those will launch with Nougat even if launched today.
For the record, here’s how the number stacked up against last month:
| Android Version | November 2017 | December 2017 |
| Android 2.3.3 – 2.3.7 (Gingerbread) | 0.5% | 0.4% |
| Android 4.0.3 – 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) | 0.5% | 0.5% |
| Android 4.1.x (JellyBean) | 2.2% | 2.0% |
| Android 4.2.x (JellyBean) | 3.1% | 3.0% |
| Android 4.3 (JellyBean) | 0.9% | 0.9% |
| Android 4.4 (KitKat) | 13.8% | 13.4% |
| Android 5.0 (Lollipop) | 6.4% | 6.1% |
| Android 5.1 (Lollipop) | 20.8% | 20.2% |
| Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) | 30.9% | 29.7% |
| Android 7.0 (Nougat) | 17.6% | 19.3% |
| Android 7.1 (Nougat) | 3.0% | 4.0% |
| Android 8.0 (Oreo) | 0.3 | 0.5% |
Note that distributions with a percentage of less than 0.1% are not shown, hence those on the 8.1 version are not shown.
0.5% master race represent.
I will make this point always! We should note that most if not all of these numbers above are on the latest release! Latest release of Play Services that is! And if you say you want to be on the latest release for the latest features, than this is one of the most important things!
I’m still in the 30% 6.0 camp, my phone Oppo R9S is still on it and shows no sign of updating, and I see no need to go to the expense of upgrading.