It has taken 4 months but Android Marshmallow has finally broken through the 1% barrier on installed devices. The news comes from the monthly Platform Version report from the company and while the news is good that the latest version of Android is starting to hit more device, it still has a mountain to climb to reach the Lollipop install based.
According to the report, Marshmallow is now on 1.2 of all devices that hit the Google Play Store in the past week. This is up from .7% in January, a sizable 58% increase, but still a whopping 32.9% behind Android Lollipop. The previous version of Android sits at 34.1% overall which is up from last month. Android KitKat remains the leader at 35.5% but it fell by .6% from the previous report.
The real challenge right now is getting manufactures to install Marshmallow out-of-the-box for new devices. Many manufactures are releasing devices with Lollipop instead of Marshmallow, even those that
Android Marshmallow
were announced as late as a few weeks ago. There are a lot of theories on why this is the case but the general consensus is that because Google is restricting what manufactures can do with features like Doze and requiring device encryption, OEMs are simply not willing to play ball. If that is really the reason, it’s a shame because ultimately the consumer (you and me) lose out the most by having outdated and not as secure operating systems on our devices.
If there is good news in the report it is the fact that Android Marshmallow adoption is continuing to grow, even if it is at a snail’s pace.
.
