Latest Android distribution numbers in, Lollipop on 1.6% of devices

The latest Android distribution numbers are in, and the biggest change from last month is that Android Lollipop has now reached enough users to register on the list, where it has made its way to 1.6 percent of the Android devices.

As for the dominant version of Android? Jelly Bean still holds the lead with a collective 44.5 percent between 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3. That said, KitKat isn’t far behind with 39.7 percent of Android devices running Android 4.4.x, up from 39.1% last month. Ice Cream Sandwich and Gingerbread both saw minor declines, going down from 6.7% to 6.4% and 7.8% to 7.4%, respectively. Froyo, on the other hand, didn’t budge at all staying at the same .4% as last month.

While its discouraging to see any devices stuck on pre-Jelly Bean builds, the good news is that these versions continue to shrink as KitKat and Lollipop rise. We expect even more changes to hit the numbers next month, as a number of devices prepare for Lollipop updates including (hopefully) the One M8, M7 and a number of devices from LG and Samsung.

Now I know what some folks might be thinking when they look at the above numbers, “Android is a fragmented mess”, and there is some truth to this. Taking a look at Apple, for example, you’ll find that Cupertino is much more aggressive at pushing devices to newer OS versions. That said, with many Google and even OEM apps/services coming to Google Play, the version of an OS your device contains is arguably less important than it was in the past. After all, most folks with a decent spec’d device, and Jelly Bean or higher, shouldn’t have trouble running the majority of apps found on Google Play.

What do you think of the latest distribution numbers? For those stuck on older versions of Android, do you find your overall experience suffers significantly as a result or do you feel you simply have upgrade envy more than anything? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.