CNET:
Apple’s latest mobile OS is now on 85 percent of all iOS devices, according to Apple’s App Store Distribution page. That figure refers specifically to all iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches that visited Apple’s App Store on Monday, August 3.
And what about iOS rival Android? The latest flavor, namely Android Lollipop, is on just 18 percent of all devices running Google’s mobile OS, according to the latest Android Developers Dashboard.
I feel less smug about these adoption numbers than I feel sorry for the mess adoption is for Android users.
The Android ecosystem strikes me as quite different from the iPhone that changes the relevance of these numbers. On one hand Android users get screwed because most have to depend on the hardware manufacturer and their phone company for an OS upgrade, and the phone companies seem to have no interest in releasing OS upgrades for a model once it is over 18 months old. On the other hand many low end Android models and just inexpensive phones with Internet access and their owners probably don’t care. While the numbers for Android might still be poor I am interested in the Lollipop percentage for Android phones costing over $400, or even breaking down the numbers by different price categories.
While it might be fun to get the latest shiny new thing, it’s less important for Android users to be on the latest version than it is for iOS users. Android SDK releases include a ‘support library’ that effectively backports new features to the older OSes. Coming from the crazy land of relentless upgrade-or-be-left-behind progress that is iOS, I found this really refreshing (as a developer). Of course, that’s good for app support, but if security fixes don’t make it out, that’s a different (and less forgivable) matter.