Android Jelly Bean marketshare rises to 33 percent

Each month, Google shares data related to the distribution of different versions of its Android mobile operating system. According to monthly distribution data for Android for the month of June, the latest version of the operating system, Android Jelly Bean, which comprises of versions 4.1 and 4.2 of the OS, is now present on 33 percent of all Android devices. Meanwhile, Android 4.0.x Ice Cream Sandwich, the previous version of the OS, is now present on 25.6 percent of all Android devices. This means that Android Jelly Bean has gained a healthy lead over Ice Cream Sandwich, which is good news for Google and Android developers. The distribution share of Jelly Bean witnessed an increase of 4.6 percent compared to last month's share of the OS.

It's worth pointing out that Jelly Bean or Android 4.1 is a major improvement in terms of performance as it brings Project Butter, making the user experience much better than Android 4.0 ICS. Also, we believe a major number of ICS devices would be able to run Jelly Bean, as there's not much difference in hardware requirements. This lead shows that a number of new phones are being launched with Android Jelly Bean out of the box or old Ice Cream Sandwich devices have received OS updates. We've seen a number of Indian OEMs launch devices running Jelly Bean in the last month, including Spice and Zen Mobile. Samsung's flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S4 also runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and the company has able to ship 10 million phones, though that doesn't necessarily translate to device activations.

As we mentioned, Android 4.0.x Ice Cream Sandwich commands a 25.6 percent share in the Android device ecosystem, which is a decline of 1.9 percent compared to May's data.

It's worth pointing out that beginning April the data charts are now based on the data collected from each device when the user visits the Google Play Store to make it more accurate and reflect the percentage of users who are most engaged in the Android and Google Play ecosystem, as per Google. Prior to this, data was collected when the device simply checked-in to Google servers.

Android 2.3.x Gingerbread's user base continues to shrink with the OS version recording a 36.5 percent share across all Android devices, a month on month decline of 2 percent.