Only 2% Android Devices are Running on Lollipop After Three Months of Launch

After 15 months of its release, KitKat has been running on 40% of the Android devices. But Android Lollipop, which has been released 3 months back, has been running on only 2% of the Android devices.

Google has updated its official version-by-version chart which displays the amount of Android market shares each release has. Android 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3 (JellyBean) has the highest market share, with 44.5%, while the Android 4.4 (KitKat) is behind with 39.7%. The latest update, Android 5.0 (Lollipop) has managed to engage only 2% of its total users.

According to ZDNet, the slow pace of updates means the users of the older versions of Android are left vulnerable to malware and data theft due to bugs in the code not being patched.

If compared with iOS 8, which is nearly on 70% of the Apple devices, the rate of upgrading is particularly slow.

The positive side of this is that Google has distributed updates for apps built directly into Android, like Gmail, Google Maps, etc. The user can upgrade these apps without a full OS update, implying that the user won’t experience the new OS features like the looks or the security tweaks, but most of the apps would work out fine.

– Rishi Baruah