It’s looking like Google’s latest Android OS, version 4.1 Jelly Bean, is finally staking its claim on the Android market as Google has revealed that the operating system’s usage has doubled in the past month, thanks to a host of updates from smartphone manufacturers.
Google’s Android Developers Dashboard is now showing that the Jelly Bean OS is now on 13% of all Android devices, which is double December’s 6.7%. Jelly Bean usage. This figure includes both versions 4.1 and 4.2 of the OS, and it shows that we’re finally starting to see a footing being made by the latest software.
The massive rise in devices running Jelly Bean is down to a host of manufacturers upgrading smartphones and tablets to Android 4.1, such as Samsung with its S3 update, HTC updating the One X and Google and LG releasing their own Jelly Bean 4.2-sporting Nexus 4.
See also: Samsung to upgrade Ace 2, Note and more to Jelly Bean
Jelly Bean has been out since June of 2012 but has since seen a very slow uptake on devices due to the processing power required by the latest OS. However, more and more manufacturers have been confirmed to be upgrading tablets and smartphones to the latest software in the next 2 months, so the rise in usage should continue.
Android Gingerbread (2.3) is still the most popular version of the OS with a huge 45% of all Android devices (mostly phones) still running the software, but many of these phones will not leave this level as the requirements of Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean are too high for the older devices.
However, the number of Gingerbread-running devices is down by 9% since November, so things are moving forward nicely for Google’s OS.