Android 6.0 Marshmallow Now on 2.3 Percent of Active Devices: Google

Google’s latest publicly available version of Android mobile and tablet operating system, Android 6.0 Marshmallow, last month finally made it to 1 percent of active devices in five months after its release to Nexus devices. The new Marshmallow version in the company’s updated Google Play distribution data for the seven-day period ending March 7 has now broke past the 2 percent mark.

According to the Android distribution chart, the Android 6.0 Marshmallow is now running on 2.3 percent active Android devices. To compare, this is a 1.1 percent increase from the February figure of 1.2 percent. Back in January and December, the Android Marshmallow figures stood at 0.7 and 0.5 percent respectively.

Sharing the distribution data of different versions of Android, Google reported that Android Lollipop has a total share of around 36.1 percent of active Android devices (with Android 5.0 Lollipop running on 16.9 percent of devices and Android 5.1 Lollipop at 19.2 percent) that check into Google Play. Last month, Android Lollipop had a total share of 34.1 percent of active Android devices.

It’s worth noting that this is the first time that Android Lollipop running devices have gone past Android KitKat-powered devices. The devices running KitKat are going down steadily in charts and the version now powers 34.3 percent devices compared to 35.5 percent last month – a decrease of 1.2 percent.

The latest Android distribution data also shows that Android Jelly Bean has a combined share of 22.3 percent – falling 1.6 percent from February’s 23.9 percent. Android 4.1.x is seen on 8.1 percent devices (down from 8.8 percent), Android 4.2.x on 11 percent (down from 11.7 percent), and Android 4.3 on 3.2 percent devices (down from 3.4 percent).

Android 4.0.x or Ice Cream Sandwich, in Google’s latest numbers, registered a share of 2.3 percent, down 0.2 percent from February. Android Gingerbread (v2.3.3-2.3.7) and Android 2.2 Froyo’s device distribution shares are 2.6 percent (down 0.1 percent) and 0.1 percent (at the same number) respectively in the latest charts.

The OpenGL version distribution across active Android devices, on the other hand, saw OpenGL 2.0 dominating at 51.6 percent (from 53.2 percent last month), and OpenGL version 3.0 steadily rising to 40.7 percent (39.7 percent last month).