Every month, like clockwork, Google updates their “Developer Dashboard“. It’s a site that shows what kind of Android devices are accessing the Google Play Store. The latest numbers show that 32.3% of all Android devices are running Android 4.1, and 5.6% are running Android 4.2, for a combined total of 37.9%. Gingerbread, the two year old version of Android that refuses to die, is on 34.1% of devices. And 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, oddly enough, is still on nearly a quarter of Android hardware.
End of story, right? Well, not so fast. You have to remember, this data is generated when users visit the Play Store. So what happens if someone never visits the Play Store and uses their Android smartphone as a dumbphone? Well, they don’t count. And what if someone in China buys an Android phone that has a Chinese pirate Play Store pre-installed and zero Google services? That doesn’t count either. Truth be told, if you’re a developer, you probably only want to target “legitimate” devices. And if you can deal with Android’s serious fragmentation issue, then power to you.
