About six months after being first announced and launching on the Google Nexus 5, it appears that Android 4.4 KitKat (Android 4.4.x) is finally starting to make inroads. With KitKat updates reaching a growing number of devices and new devices such as the Samsung Galaxy S5 and HTC One (M8) being snapped up, KitKat adoption finally appears to be on the move. From 5.3% in April, it has jumped to 8.5% in the latest update to the Google Android Platform Versions report.
As has been the trend for a while now, older versions of Android continue to see declining shares. Jelly Bean (versions 4.1.x to 4.3) once again saw a slight decrease from 61.4% to 60.8%. Ice Cream Sandwich and Gingerbread also continued to slowly fade away with the particularly persistent Gingerbread dropping a full 1.6% over the last month.
On the Apple side, the latest numbers, dated April 20, show that iOS 7 climbed another 2% over the past month to reach 87%. Both iOS 6 and earlier versions each dropped 1%. It’s clear that Google will continue to envy Apple’s adoption numbers for a while yet.
Both Apple and Google regularly publish their platform version reports to help developers plan what versions of the operating systems in their apps. It also gives us a glimpse at the state of the Android and iOS universes at a specific point in time.
Sources : Google Developers // Apple Developer