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Android’s biggest issue is as prominent in 2017 as it’s ever been

Published Jul 7th, 2017 2:03PM EDT
Android market share July 2017
Image: YouTube

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If you thought that this might be the year that Google finally solved its Android fragmentation problem, I have some bad news for you. As of July 6th, Android 7.0 (the most recent version of the OS) is running on 11.5% of Android devices. That’s 4.4% higher than May 2nd, but don’t forget that Android 7.0 first began rolling out to Nexus devices in August 2016. Quite a wait for double-digit adoption.

Breaking down the numbers a bit further, Google’s Android Dashboard shows that 10.6% of Android users have upgraded to Android 7.0, but that only 0.9% have reached Android 7.1, which rolled out last October. To put those figures into perspective, Apple claims that 86% of iOS users are running iOS 10 as of July 5th. iOS 10 was released in September, a few weeks after Android 7.0.

Image source: Android Dashboards

With just weeks left until the launch of Android 8.0, nearly a third of Android users are still running Android Lollipop, which encompasses versions 5.0 and 5.1. While Android 6.0 Marshmallow has finally surpassed Lollipop’s market share, 30.1% of Android users are still working with an OS from 2014.

Meanwhile, 17.1% of Android users are still running 4.4 KitKat and 9.5% (or greater) are using phones with versions between 2.3.3 Gingerbread and 4.3 Jelly Bean. Nearly 60% of Android users have yet to upgrade to an operating system that rolled out after October 2015. That’s not a good sign.

Google has promised that Android 8.0 will “make it easier, faster and less costly for manufacturers to update devices to a new version of Android,” but we’ve heard that line before. We remain cautiously optimistic that Android’s distribution numbers will become more respectable in the near future.

Jacob Siegal
Jacob Siegal Associate Editor

Jacob Siegal is Associate Editor at BGR, having joined the news team in 2013. He has over a decade of professional writing and editing experience, and helps to lead our technology and entertainment product launch and movie release coverage.