The slow and somewhat painful adoption of Android Oreo continues but there are some highlights to point out in this month’s Android Distribution Report. Google released the report today and it shows that the latest version of the Android platform, Oreo, was installed on 1.1% of the devices that hit the Google Play Store for the 7-day period ending February 5, 2018. That’s up .4% from the January report but there isn’t much to applaud frankly.
Android Oreo has been out now six months and despite Google and manufactures releasing updates, the needle has hardly moved on adoption. This is likely due to a couple of reasons. First, manufactures are being painfully slow in getting the updates out themselves. Two, lots of people are using devices that are over 2 years old and will not be updated.
If there was a positive in the Android Distribution report, it is that Android Nougat (v7.x) is now the most widely used version of Android. It was on 28.5% of devices, an increase of 2.2% over January. That was reciprocated by the fall of Android Marshmallow (v6), the previously most installed version. It fell .5% to 28.1% of all devices.
The rise of Nougat is a positive in that it is substantially more stable & secure than all previous versions and is still widely supported.
As for the rest of the report, all of the other versions fell in usage.
February 2018 Android Distribution Report
With Android P slated to hit in late 2018, the question will be if it sees greater and faster adoption than Oreo. It is likely as Project Treble will be a requirement, even if upgrades are offered. With Oreo, manufactures have had the option to release on Nougat then upgrade to Oreo, bypassing the requirement for Treble. That ends with P.
Until then, we are probably stuck watching a sad, tiny incremental growth rate each month for what is arguably one of the best Android versions ever.
Sigh.
