Android in Apr 2013: JB overtakes ICS, Gingerbread still rules

Google unveiled the latest numbers showing the adoption of the various Android versions in the past month (April 2013). This report is the first to use the new, more realistic metric. It keeps track of how many users manually visited the Play Store. Previous scores were calculated based on how many devices connected to a Google server (even automatically, behind the scenes).

So, it’s not quite clear how much of the changes in distribution are due to the new metric and how much due to users actually upgrading their phones.

One thing is clear though - Gingerbread is here to stay - the OS that debuted in the end of 2010 still had the majority share this April (it fell 1.3 percentage points).

Meanwhile, Jelly Bean (4.1 and 4.2 branches combined) overtook Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0). Very few users are on 4.2 and ICS users still outnumber 4.1 users, but both combined account for a larger user base than that of ICS. Also, 4.1 got more new users (it’s up 3.1 percentage points) than 4.2 (up 0.3 percentage points).

Ice Cream Sandwich, Android 4.0, which actually grew in market share in March is down 1.8 percentage points in April. Perhaps that's due to the introduction of the new metric.

Confused about the differences between Android versions? Check out our detailed rundown here.

Source