Remember the good old days when Google gave us distribution statistics every month so we could see which version of Android was being used the most. Of course, iPhone fans would use the data to poke fun at the low percentage of Android phones running the most up-to-date version of the software.
Last November, distribution figures showed that two months after the Android 12 era, Android 10 was the most widely used version of the operating system at 26.5%, followed by the 24.3% who had Android 11 installed.
The latest data is from May 9 and it shows that Android 11 is currently the most widely distributed version of Android, installed on about 28.3% of Android handsets. The 2.1 percentage point increase in Android 11 distribution over the past six months almost matches the 2.6 percentage point decrease in Android 10 distribution over the same period (from 26.5% to 23.9%) .
The latest Android distribution figures. Credit 9to5Google
Android 9 Pie is next with 16.2% market share and Android 8-8.1 Oreo with 11.6%. That is followed by Android 7-7.1 Nougat at 5%, Android 6 Marshmallow at 3.9% and Lollipop (Android 5-5.1) at a 3% share of the global Android pie. Android 4.4 KitKat still has a small share of 1%, while Jelly Bean (Android 4.1-4.3) runs on 0.4% of Android phones.
Developers use this chart to see how many Android users they will lose by not targeting certain Android users