Android in Sept 2011: Gingerbread surpasses 38% share

The numbers from the monthly Android version distribution report are in and September is most probably that last month with Froyo in the lead. The Gingerbread ascend continues, while Honeycomb is finally starting to make itself easier to notice on the Android map.

Over the past month the Android 2.3.3-2.3.7 releases have climbed 7.5 percent points to a 38.2% share, while Android 2.2 Froyo has slid down 5.9 percent points to 45.3%. As the sales of Gingerbread running droids continue to be strong, by this time next month the two distribution shares should be reversed.

Further back, 2.1 Eclair share continues to shrink and it's now 11.7% - hardly a wonder, considering that there are no Eclair-running smartphones now and the share of those that have already shipped, is being diminished by the vast growth of the Google OS.

The other outdated revisions - Android 1.5 Cupcake and 1.6 Donut now hold market shares of 1.1% and 1.4% respectively. If you watch closely, you would notice that Cupcake has actually gained 0.1% this month, but that's probably just a side effect of the way the statistics are being made (by counting those that visit the market over the last two weeks of each month) and not some surprising revival of the ancient revision.

Finally, there is some good news to Android tablet lovers. Honeycomb is starting to make its presence felt gaining 0.4 percent points of the Android market, which means that Google-powered slates' sales are improving pretty quickly.

Given that the tablet market is still way smaller than that of smartphones and that Android tablets have only been around a year or so the 1.8% market share doesn't look too bad actually. Naturally, it's the new 3.1 and 3.2 revisions that are driving the progress with the (rather laggy) Android 3.0 only holding a 0.2% share.

We are certain that the smartphone trends will continue into the next month, despite the announcement of the Ice Cream Sandwich and Samsung Nexus Prime. Those will take some time to make an impact and if previous Google smartphones are anything to go, the Nexus Prime might not sell that much at all.

It will be interesting to see if the Honeycomb share continues to climb, as a continued growth will confirm that Android is finally ready to challenge iOS on the tablet front as well.

Source | Via