Android Nougat Running on Nearly 5 Percent of Active Devices, Says Google

Google's Android 7.0 Nougat operating system has been seeing a faster pace of adoption than before, but it still has a long way to go. According to the latest Google Play distribution data, Android Nougat is now running on 4.9 percent of active devices, up from 2.8 percent from last month's data and a significant improvement from January's data which stood at a measly 0.7 percent.

The latest Google Play distribution data shows that Android 7.0 is now running on 4.5 percent of active devices while Android 7.1 adoption hasn't seen a change from last month, continuing to stand at 0.4 percent. Steady Nougat adoption also means that Marshmallow is slowly dropping in numbers with a cumulative 31.2 percent active devices running the previous OS, a 0.1 percent drop from last month.

Meanwhile, Android Lollipop continues to the most used Android version in April with a a total share of around 32 percent of active Android devices (with Android 5.0 Lollipop running on 9 percent of devices and Android 5.1 Lollipop at 23 percent), based on the recent data. This is a slight drop from last month where Android Lollipop stood at 32.5 percent of active Android devices. Android KitKat is now running on 20 percent of devices compared to last month's 20.8 percent.

The Google Play distribution data also shows older versions such as Android Jelly Bean having combined share of 10.1 percent, which is a drop from 10.6 percent from last month. Lastly, Android Ice Cream Sandwich and Android Gingerbread now stand evenly poised at 0.9 percent each, and its only a matter of time before one or both of these are completely phased out from the distribution data, just like Android Froyo was in January.

The latest OpenGL version distribution numbers, on the other hand, saw OpenGL 2.0 at 38.9 percent, OpenGL version 3.0 at 42.5 percent and OpenGL version 3.1 at 18.6 percent. Notably, the data only represents devices running the latest Google Play app - which is only compatible with Android 2.2 and higher versions.