More Than 6 Months Later, KitKat Still on Less Than 10% of Android Devices

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Google's Nexus 5 handset, the first device to run Android 4.4 KitKat.

Image: Mashable, Christina Ascani

By Karissa Bell2014-05-06 02:58:38 UTC

The adoption rate for Android KitKat, the most recent version of Android, is still low, despite steady growth.

KItKat, which was first released last October, is now running on 8.5% of Android devices, according to Google's most recent numbers.

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That data was collected during the last week of April, and is based off of all Android devices running Android 2.2 or higher, which Google says is about 99% of devices on its servers.

While the numbers may seem low, KitKat is definitely growing, albeit slowly. As of January, KitKat only claimed 1.4% of Android devices.

Google's latest adoption numbers reveal little change..

These numbers highlight Google's continuing struggle with Android fragmentation.

Jelly Bean, the previous version of Android released in 2012, still claims the lion's share of Android usage, with nearly 61% of devices running a version of the operating system. And Gingerbread, an operating system now more than three years old, still accounts for more than 15% of Android devices.

In contrast, Apple's iOS 7, which was released last September, has an adoption rate well over 80%.

Part of the this can be attributed to the way Google rolls out updates to Android. While Apple pushes updates to all of its users at once, Android updates are often dependent on the manufacturers and carriers, so users often have to wait to get the latest updates.

For example, when KitKat first rolled out, it was only available for select devices, which greatly slowed down the adoption rate.

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Topics: Android, Android KitKat, apps-and-software, Apps and Software, Tech