Android ICS Now on 10 Percent Devices After 8 Months, Highlights Fragmentation

SOURCE: Only Gizmos

As per Android Developers site, it’s taken almost 9 months for Google’s latest iteration, i.e. Ice Cream Sandwich to reach about 10.9 percent of android devices across the globe, that too after a more than 50% growth from the last month.

Growth for ICS in the last month can be attributed to flagship devices like HTC One X and the Samsung Galaxy SIII which have doing quite well in the smartphone market. Also it’s interesting to note that Android Froyo which was introduced way back in May, 2010 still holds a considerable share at 17.3 percent after dropping just 2 percent from last month.

This highlights the extent of fragmentation that exists in Google’s Android ecosystem, something which we were disappointed that Google did not address to curb during their latest Google I/O.

Android Gingerbread has the largest share of the pie at present, which fell for the first time since the last year to 64 from 65 percent. With all the carriers and the OEM’s taking more than 8 months to get the ICS on their new and existing devices, brings up a huge question mark on the upgradability of the Android devices and thus poses a huge challenge for Android to bring a consistent and uniform experience for its users.

This is something we believe, Google should address as a priority in order to ward off any competition from Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform which has started to look even more promising after the preview of the Windows Phone 8 UI. Windows Phone 8 based handsets are supposed to hit the market towards the end of 2012, whereas you all by now know how soon Google would be able to bring Jelly Bean to the existing Android devices.