Over the past few months, Jelly Bean has been on a meteoric rise as it latches onto more and more Android devices. At the same time, Gingerbread use has been slowly declining. With a new way of reporting distribution numbers, Google will hopefully hurry both trends along.
For its April report of Android distribution numbers, Google says that the reporting mechanism has changed from Android activations to only devices that visit the Google Play store. The change will more accurately reflect “those users who are most engaged in the Android and Google Play ecosystem.”
With this new method of reporting, Jelly Bean use has risen by almost 10 percent to 25 percent of the entire Android ecosystem. Ice Cream Sandwich saw a minor rise in use as well with it now sitting at 29.3 percent.
Gingerbread continues its path of decline with only a 39.8 percent share of the Android ecosystem. Even with the new method of reporting, Gingerbread only saw a decline of less than five percent. It will still be a while before we see Jelly Bean or Ice Cream Sandwhich become the dominant player in the Android ecosystem.
It will be interesting to see what the Android ecosystem looks like a few months after Google launches the new version of Android later this year. Distribution reporting may also be thrown off if rumors of an Android notebook turn out to be true. Both scenarios will likely create a very interesting year for Android.