The latest Android numbers from Google (GOOG) highlight continued growth for Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean. As of October 1st, Ice Cream Sandwich is now found on 23.7% of all Android devices, an increase from 20.8% last month, while Jelly Bean has increased slightly to 1.8%. Despite the recent growth, the nearly two-year old Gingerbread operating system is still powering a majority of Android devices.
Jelly Bean adoption is expected to increase in the month of October, however, with both HTC (2498) and Samsung (005930) scheduled to update their flagship smartphones to the latest Android operating system. Even so, the rollout of the latest version of Android has still gone slowly compared with Apple, (AAPL) whose latest operating system was released last month and was already found on 15% of iOS devices after just 24 hours. Google does not release the update directly to consumers, unlike Apple. Manufacturers and carriers customize each software version, sometimes causing massive gaps from when Google announces an update and when a device actually receives it.