Android Oreo Now on 5.7 Percent of Active Devices, Nougat Still Dominates: Google

Google on Tuesday revealed a new beta of the next version of Android that is currently referred to as Android P. While the developer preview was available for select devices some time ago, Google has expanded the number of devices for which the public beta will be available. Meanwhile, Android Oreo adoption has crossed the 5 percent mark, and is now on 5.7 percent of Android devices, sadly the highest ever share for the build. It includes the growth of both Android 8.0 and Android 8.1. It is not surprising that Oreo is still not able to dominate the Android family. According to the Android distribution chat for the month of May 2018, Android Nougat - including Android 7.0 and Android 7.1 - is leading the entire family with an overall share of 31.1 percent.

As per the distribution chart shared by Google, Android Oreo's share increased from 1.1 percent in February to 4.6 percent in April and now 5.7 percent in May. While Android 8.0 has reached the adoption rate of 4.9 percent (up from 4.1 percent in April), Android 8.1 has grown marginally to 0.8 percent (up from 0.8 percent in April).

When it comes to Android Nougat, Android 7.0 has 22.9 percent share (down from 23 percent in April), whereas Android 7.1 has 8.2 percent share (up from 7.8 percent in April).

Next up is Android Marshmallow, which still remains the second most widely distributed Android version. However, the distribution of Marshmallow has marginally declined to 25.5 percent in May from the 26 percent share in April. Similarly, in the case of Android Lollipop, distribution in the month of May has declined to 22.4 percent from 22.9 percent in April. The distribution of Android KitKat has also declined to 10.3 percent from 10.5 percent in the previous month. Likewise, Android Jelly Bean has reached 4.3 percent in April, down from 4.5 percent. Interestingly, Android Gingerbread still owns a share of 0.3 percent among all Android devices.

Google collected the Android distribution data by recording active devices visiting Google Play in a seven-day period ending on May 7 - . Notably, the company has not mentioned Android versions with less than 0.1 percent distribution.

In comparison, on the other side of the fence, Apple had claimed in January itself that 65 percent of compatible iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices were running its latest operating system iOS 11, which became available in September last year. It was followed by 28 percent devices running iOS 10. This means that iOS 11's adoption still exceeds the last three versions of Android combined.

Also notable, is that Google has updated its OpenGL version distribution numbers which have OpenGL 3.0 at 45.7 percent, OpenGL v2.0 at 35.2 percent, and OpenGL 3.1 at 19.1 percent.