Android market analysis

Ice Cream Sandwich now on 21 percent Android devices, Gingerbread still running strong

Google has released the latest distribution numbers of Android versions across the active smartphones and tablet and Ice Cream Sandwich is finally on a significant number of Android devices.

According to platform distribution data, 20.9percent of Android devices are currently running on Ice Cream Sandwich. Ice Cream Sandwich was originally announced back in October and manufacturers were initially slow in upgrades but off late, we have seen lot of devices getting the ICS update, leading to the five percent jump in Android 4.0's share.

Similarly, Jelly Bean is still in a very nascent stage even after three months of the launch.

Unsurprisingly, Gingerbread is still at the top spot with 57.5percent devices running it, but the number is going down, which is good news. It was on 60.6percent devices in the previously released data.

The versions older than Gingerbread are still holding their ground; mainly because of initial Android buyers, who haven't switched their devices till now and manufacturers have no plans to push any updates for them.