Four out of every ten Android devices are still on a version of the OS that’s over two years old

BY Stefan Constantinescu

Published 2 May 2013

Every two weeks or so, Google likes to update their Android Developer Dashboard website. It’s a place where people can go to see what sort of devices people are using to access the Google Play Store. The latest data shows that over 28% of Android users are running the latest version of the operating system, Jelly Bean.

On the other side of the fence, 38.5% of Android users are still stuck on Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Now just to give you some context, Gingerbread was announced in December 2010. That means the OS is almost 30 months old. I want to say that this high number is because of two year contracts, but most Android devices are sold in places where people buy their phones unlocked and unsubsidized. That and the larger handset players have been really good about software updates.

The real debate about these numbers is how many device aren’t actually included. Remember, the figures above are collected from devices that access the Google Play Store. Do you have any idea how many millions of Android phones are sold in China with a custom ROM that has absolutely zero Google services installed?