The latest Android fragmentation numbers are in.
And, as to be expected, the most recent version, Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) has an incredibly small share of the pie. Barely one-half of one percent of all Android devices are running ICS.
Of course, that’s because only one widely available device has Ice Cream Sandwich, and that’s the cost-prohibitive $300 Galaxy Nexus.
A very small portion of Nexus S phone owners also received an update to Android 4.0, but that update was quickly yanked due to unspecified internal problems.
Here’s the breakdown of the rest of Android versions:
* Android 1.5 (Cupcake) API 3- 0.6 percent
* Android 1.6 (Donut) API 4- 1.1 percent
* Android 2.1 (Eclair) API 7 – 8.5 percent
* Android 2.2 (Froyo) API 8 – 30.4 percent
* Android 2.3 – Android 2.3.2 (Gingerbread) API 9 – 0.6 percent
* Android 2.3.3 – Android 2.3.7 (Gingerbread) API 10 – 54.9 percent
* Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) API 11 – 0.1 percent
* Android 3.1 (Honeycomb) API 12 – 1.5 percent
* Android 3.2 (Honeycomb) API 13 – 1.7 percent
Ice Cream Sandwich is one of the biggest updates to Android yet, and includes such features as scanning your face to unlock the phone, a much more robust speech-to-text software program, and an entire platform of data sharing that focuses on Near Field Communication (NFC).
NFC so far has been mostly focused on using your phone as a payment device in retail stores, but with Ice Cream Sandwich’s Android Beam, it can also allow users to easily share contact information, Youtube videos, or website addresses simply by waving two phones next to each other.
Several other manufacturers have pledged support for the new update, and a bunch of phones currently running an older version of Android will be eligible to upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich beginning in the coming months.
