Year-old Android 5 Lollipop on 33% of Google Play users, but only 20% of devices in China
Google's ability to distribute new Android updates has always lagged far behind Apple's iOS, but the situation is even worse in China, where the "Lollipop" version 5.x, introduced in 2014 alongside iOS 8, has only reached about a fifth of all devices, two thirds the distribution it has achieved elsewhere.
Source: Google
Every few weeks, Google reports an updated version mix of "all the devices that visited the Google Play Store in the prior 7 days." It depicts the breakdown for each major version as a percentage and depicts the numbers in a pie chart (similar to the one above on the left).
Pie charts are typically selected to obscure the differences between different slices of a given pie. Despite this flattering portrayal, Google Play's Android version pie chart still makes it clear that only a tiny shard the active installed base of Android users are using the latest Marshmallow release, in stark contrast to Apple's similarly new iOS 9, which has already reached 75 percent of the installed base.
Going back another year, just under a third of Google Play users are on 5.0 Lollipop. Travel back another year to the 2013 vintage of iOS 7, and Android 4.4 KitKat sits on 36 percent, despite its security issues. Go back another year to the days of iOS 6, and some version of Jelly Bean (introduced summer 2012) sits on another 25 percent of active Google Play user's devices.
When you move the data from a pie to a column chart (shown above right), it further emphasizes just how old Android software really is in the wild, and the very difficult time Google has in solving the increasing issue of OS level fragmentation.
One of the bigger issues is that Android's licensees and mobile carriers often see distributing updates as a low priority because they have no profit incentive to do so. If anything, the preparing, testing and delivery of updates costs money and other resources and offers users a disincentive against paying to upgrade to a new phone or other device.
However, Google Play only represents users from one of the two largest smartphone markets in the world. Because all of Google's software services are blocked in mainland China, users in that massive market (currently the world's largest) are distributed between a series of third party download stores run by search engines, phone carriers and other vendors.
Determined users in China can work around the national firewall that blocks access to Google Play, but that default barrier has left Google with access to only around 5 percent of the smartphone population, a position outside of the top 20 Android download stores, according to AppInChina.
Google Play reportedly hopes to officially reenter China this year, but that will require battling Baidu, "China's Google," for attention, along with other established stores who have no intention of giving their market share away. That includes popular stores operated by social networks such as Tencent and the largest independent downloads store, 360 Mobile Assistant.
Google will also face the uphill challenge of wresting users away from its licensees' own stores, such as those operated by Xiaomi, Huawei, Meizu and Lenovo (which those hardware makers count on to make up for minimal profits on hardware sales), as well as State-owned mobile carriers who operate their own Android stores, such as China Unicom and China Telecom.
On top of the security issues related to "side-loading" stores that often cater to pirated apps and are full of aggressive malware and pervasive spyware schemes, Android users in China are also even less likely to get timely updates for their operating system.
According to analyst Ben Bajarin of Creative Strategies on Twitter, "Android 5.0-5.1.1 is running on approximately 20% of all Android devices in China."
In addition to reporting on China, Bajarin is also currently conducting a survey of Fitbit, Apple Watch and other smartwatch users in conjunction with Wristly.
Source: Google
Every few weeks, Google reports an updated version mix of "all the devices that visited the Google Play Store in the prior 7 days." It depicts the breakdown for each major version as a percentage and depicts the numbers in a pie chart (similar to the one above on the left).
Pie charts are typically selected to obscure the differences between different slices of a given pie. Despite this flattering portrayal, Google Play's Android version pie chart still makes it clear that only a tiny shard the active installed base of Android users are using the latest Marshmallow release, in stark contrast to Apple's similarly new iOS 9, which has already reached 75 percent of the installed base.
Going back another year, just under a third of Google Play users are on 5.0 Lollipop. Travel back another year to the 2013 vintage of iOS 7, and Android 4.4 KitKat sits on 36 percent, despite its security issues. Go back another year to the days of iOS 6, and some version of Jelly Bean (introduced summer 2012) sits on another 25 percent of active Google Play user's devices.
When you move the data from a pie to a column chart (shown above right), it further emphasizes just how old Android software really is in the wild, and the very difficult time Google has in solving the increasing issue of OS level fragmentation.
One of the bigger issues is that Android's licensees and mobile carriers often see distributing updates as a low priority because they have no profit incentive to do so. If anything, the preparing, testing and delivery of updates costs money and other resources and offers users a disincentive against paying to upgrade to a new phone or other device.
Even slower OS updates in the world's largest smartphone market
However, Google Play only represents users from one of the two largest smartphone markets in the world. Because all of Google's software services are blocked in mainland China, users in that massive market (currently the world's largest) are distributed between a series of third party download stores run by search engines, phone carriers and other vendors.
Determined users in China can work around the national firewall that blocks access to Google Play, but that default barrier has left Google with access to only around 5 percent of the smartphone population, a position outside of the top 20 Android download stores, according to AppInChina.
Google Play reportedly hopes to officially reenter China this year, but that will require battling Baidu, "China's Google," for attention, along with other established stores who have no intention of giving their market share away. That includes popular stores operated by social networks such as Tencent and the largest independent downloads store, 360 Mobile Assistant.
Google will also face the uphill challenge of wresting users away from its licensees' own stores, such as those operated by Xiaomi, Huawei, Meizu and Lenovo (which those hardware makers count on to make up for minimal profits on hardware sales), as well as State-owned mobile carriers who operate their own Android stores, such as China Unicom and China Telecom.
On top of the security issues related to "side-loading" stores that often cater to pirated apps and are full of aggressive malware and pervasive spyware schemes, Android users in China are also even less likely to get timely updates for their operating system.
Android 5.0-5.1.1 is running on approximately 20% of all Android devices in China. Smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, etc.
-- Ben Bajarin (@BenBajarin) According to analyst Ben Bajarin of Creative Strategies on Twitter, "Android 5.0-5.1.1 is running on approximately 20% of all Android devices in China."
In addition to reporting on China, Bajarin is also currently conducting a survey of Fitbit, Apple Watch and other smartwatch users in conjunction with Wristly.
Comments
or were you just trying to take a dig at Apple because you find those messages anoying? Because if you don't like being reminded to update your OS you should just go with Android and then it wouldn't even be an option.
Android remain king of the lower spheres, but Apple will slowly and steadily take a bit more of the premium slice every year.
This is what Tim Cook was referring to during the analyst call. They will continue to grow even in a mature market.
Besides, the Android hardware is often about ready to flip into deceleration to preserve itself from overheating. How could it survive the extra load of an OS upgrade?
After years of feeling like an Apple apologist, it's nice to see Apple products leading the field in all ways possible.
Point 2? Not so much IMHO. If you want to load the latest version of Android on a two year old phone and your carrier/OEM didn't offer it themselves there's likely a way to do so if it's all that important. But as someone mentioned earlier Google has de-bundled many of the stock features from the OS itself over the past couple of years so that owners of even very old smartphones can still get the feature enhancements that would normally have come only with a full OS update. Even security updates are now being delivered to many handsets on a regular monthly basis separate from an Android OS version update, which hopefully becomes a more widespread plan for the rest of the OEM's that haven't done so yet. Having the very latest OS version is simply not as necessary as it once was. For those reasons (among others) it's not exactly an "Apple's to apples" comparison of OS version adoption rates since new iOS features and security fixes generally come only via an OS update.
In any event Apple's comprehensive OS update method works well for them. Google doesn't have the same luxury so that's at least one thing Apple fans don't have to worry about them copying.
Deflection much? Some history for you:
- Google used to count devices that checked into their servers. This gave a very accurate reflection of the total number of devices at each version level.
- Google changed their method of tracking so it only counted users who visited the Play Store. They claimed this was better for developers as it showed people who are more likely to buy Apps, not total users (many on older versions who probably don't buy many Apps).
- When Google made this change, usage for newer versions shot up and older versions went down, making it appear more users were on newer versions.
- Apple NEVER used to publish a chart showing iOS adoption rates.
- After Google switched counting methods, Apple introduced their own version usage chart, and used the same counting method as Google (and poked fun at Google at the same time).
Hope I cleared that up for you.
Why mention it when a) not all features and APIs are available through Google Play Services and b) not all security updates are repairable by Google Play Services.
Just look at the recent Android security flaws discovered this past year and how many required an update to the OS outside of what Google Play Services can fix.
Google is still a long way from being able to directly update devices outside of Nexus devices.