While Google has time and time again said that it plans to iron out fragmentation in the Android ecosystem, the numbers tell an obviously and entirely different tale. According to statistics from Android’s Platform Versions dashboard that were detailed in a report by Engadget, Android 4.0 — or as most of you know it, Ice Cream Sandwich — is only installed on a whopping 2.9% of all devices. Gingerbread (Android 2.3) is still the most widespread version of Android, with a 63.7% piece of the pie and Honeycomb is next to non-existent.
ICS was released last November and the Internet is already full of talk about Android 5.0, which will be code-named Jelly Bean. Doesn’t that kind of contradict Google’s plans? It seems to me like they should be focusing more efforts towards bringing Ice Cream Sandwich to more devices. The latest version really is lovely, but with such a small population of users, it isn’t doing a whole lot for the overall community.
What are your thoughts on this topic? Are you lucky enough to be in that small percentage of Ice Cream Sandwich-based device owners? If not, which device do you own and how does being left out in the cold by Google make you feel? Make use of the comment thread below to share your opinions. We can only hope that someone behind the scenes sees this and it makes even the smallest of differences.
