October’s Android Distribution numbers map Oreo at 0.2 percent of user adoption since the software was finally pushed out to uses back in August, marking an early push for the next version of Android software where Google usually waits to push it out around the same time it unveils new phones, which promptly act as the showpiece for what the new software is supposed to be like, then finally making its way out to previous year phones. This time around that wasn’t the case, and now with Oreo on the board for the first time and with the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL getting closer to a launch, that percentage could very well increase for the month of November, though not likely by a whole lot.
In addition to Oreo finally being accounted for in Google’s Android Distribution numbers, Nougat has increased from being on 15.8 percent of devices on September’s distribution chart to 17.8 percent, the difference being that last month’s numbers showed 15.8 percent for both Android 7.0 and Android 7.1 collectively, whereas this month the 15.8 percent comes from Android 7.0 alone, with Android 7.1 accounting for 2 percent of the total amount of users.
Other versions saw slight changes too. Marshmallow for example, which is Android 6.0, went down this month, though only by a very minor amount compared to the Nougat increase, moving from 32.2 percent to just a flat 32 percent. Lollipop stayed about the same between Android 5.0 and Android 5.1. Android 5.1 decreased from 21.7 percent to just a flat 21 percent. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Android 5.0 decreased as well, moving down from 7.1 percent of users to 6.7 percent. KitKat, meanwhile, decreased from 15.1 percent to just 14.5 percent, and two of Jelly Bean’s three versions went down in user adoption also, which were 4.1 and 4.2. Out of the entire list of software versions the only ones which didn’t decrease or increase at all were Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, and 2.3 Gingerbread, which stayed at 1 percent, 0.6 percent, and 0.6 percent respectively. What’s interesting is that both Gingerbread and Ice Cream Sandwich, Google’s oldest versions of the Android software which are still running on devices, have more user adoption than Google’s newest software, which sort of highlights the slow pace that software update rollouts can have. This should change though as Google’s Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL get released, and as more phones from this year get the bump from Nougat to Oreo.