Google posts September's Android platform distribution numbers, still no Pie
In what is becoming a tradition, Google has published new Android platform distribution numbers for September before the month is even over. In fact, Google bumped the numbers once in the middle of September, which is a bit peculiar. Whatever the motivation, it wasn't to show off the impact Android 9 Pie has made, as the latest version of Android is still apparently sitting below the 0.1% threshold for inclusion.
The numbers below were gathered from the Play Store over a 7-day period ending on September 28th.
Android version stats, September 2018
| Android version | Previous data (%) | Current data (%) | Change (pp) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2.3 | 0.3 | 0.3 | 0 |
| 4.0 | 0.3 | 0.3 | 0 |
| 4.1 | 1.2 | 1.1 | -0.1 |
| 4.2 | 1.8 | 1.6 | -0.2 |
| 4.3 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0 |
| 4.4 | 8.6 | 7.8 | -0.8 |
| 5.0 | 3.8 | 3.6 | -0.2 |
| 5.1 | 15.4 | 14.7 | -0.7 |
| 6.0 | 22.7 | 21.6 | -1.1 |
| 7.0 | 20.3 | 19.0 | -1.3 |
| 7.1 | 10.5 | 10.3 | -0.2 |
| 8.0 | 11.4 | 13.4 | +2.0 |
| 8.1 | 3.2 | 5.8 | +2.6 |
For those who prefer to see their numbers, we've also got this month's Pie-less pie graph. (And I'm gonna make that joke every month until it shows up, too.)
The perpetual trend of ongoing updates and upgrades continues to eat away market share from older Android versions. Curiously, this is actually the first time Android 7.1 has seen a loss that I can remember. For the last four months, it was on a slow but steady increase.
The numbers for Oreo are also picking up tremendously, with a relatively huge 4.6% increase in the last month. Although it saw more significant gains in July, that was only because we didn't get updated numbers for two whole months. That brings the previous year's version of Android up to 19.2%, well ahead of Nougat's mere 15.8% this time last year. It's probably too early to thank Treble for this change, but the rate of device updates seems to be accelerating.
That humorous bump in Android 2.3 Gingerbread's numbers is still hanging around. Lollipop and earlier fell a total of 2% combined in this month, which is also a slightly accelerated loss from August. And of course, the elephant in the room is the ongoing lack of Pie in Google's numbers. Only a handful of phones have been updated to the latest version, though the ranks of the updated now include the OnePlus 6.
Maybe Pie will show up in time for Thanksgiving?
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