Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" reaches 10% market share

[Master Devwi]

The tech industry might already be focused on the imminent release of Android 4.1 “Jelly Bean,” but Google’s most recent Android release has reached an important – if somewhat small – milestone as well. According to the Android Developers website, Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich” (ICS) has finally surpassed 10% market share.

When combined, smartphones and tablets running Android 4.0 - 4.0.2 and 4.0.3 - 4.0.4 accounted for 10.9% of devices accessing the Google Play store within the last 14 days. This puts it in third behind Gingerbread (64%) and Froyo (17.3%).

Surpassing the 10% barrier isn’t all that impressive, given that the OS was released last November. In the 8.5 months since then, Ice Cream Sandwich has been made available on many – although, strangely, not all – new smartphones and tablets, as well as a number of devices which currently support updates to Ice Cream Sandwich. Unfortunately, due to Android’s relatively open nature and the update process, many older devices never get updated, even if they could easily handle the OS. That being said, it’s nice to see ICS making some progress in the market.

Has your device manufacturer (and, if applicable, wireless carrier) served up ICS for you yet?

[Android Developers via The Verge]

[Jeven]

I'm on Jelly Bean, the lesson is: buy a Nexus or something that isn't on a carrier ie. contract-free, unlocked.

[nathan]

How many iphones have ALL the software features that the iphone 4s has with iOS 6? How many Lumia 900 will get updated to the new wp8 when they come out? In actual comparison to the other mobile OS's, Android isn't that far behind.

[steinburger1109]

Well, a lot of iOS's restrictions regarding old devices is based on hardware. For example, when iOS 4 came out (I think it was 4 that added multi-tasking), they gave iOS 4 to iPhone 3's, but it wasn't able to do true multi-tasking.

The difference is that a great deal more Android phones are capable of running ICS, they just don't update because there is no profit.