Android 7.0 Nougat , which was released almost six months ago on August 22, 2016 has finally managed to cross the 1 percent mark with respect to adoption rate. Such an appalling adoption rate brings to light the severe fragmentation issue facing Google’s popular operating system.
Android is so heavily fragmented that we still have devices running Android versions which are more than four years old. This is not a new issue by any means. 2015’sAndroid 6.0 marshmallow reached just 18.7% of devices a whole year after its release. While Marshmallow’s adoption rate was slow, Nougat has reached a whole new level of sluggishness.
The Nougat update brings with it many new features, bug fixes and noticeable improvements like new Quick Settings controls, an improved battery saver mode, security updates, 70 plus new Emoji and the most important feature, multi-window support.
The extent of Android fragmentation
As per data directly fromGoogle , Android 7.0 Nougat has reached just 1.2% of Android users nearly six months after release. 2015’s Marshmallow is at 30.7 %, while Android 5.0 Lollipop rules the roost with a 32.9% adoption rate.
What is astonishing is thatAndroid 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and Android 2.3 Gingerbread are still chugging along, albeit in less than 1% of devices.
Analysis: The reason behind Android’s glacial updates
Android updates lag far far behind the standard set by Apple. While Google's own Nexus and Android One line-up usually get the update in a timely manner, the situation is dismal for the rest of the Android devices.
The tendency of manufacturers to heavily skin and modify stock Android is one the major reasons for this snail's pace of Android updates. Every manufacturer, from big weights like Samsung, Sony and LG, to Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi, Huawei and LeEco heavily customizes the stock build of Android according to their own tastes and design preferences, in a bid to differentiate themselves from the crowd.
Hardware manufacturers are responsible for delivering updates to the devices they sell. However, apart from a few flagships, none of the smartphones are supported for more than a year. Forget two updates; some devices never get a major android version update at all.
Android is so heavily fragmented that we still have devices running Android versions which are more than four years old. This is not a new issue by any means. 2015’s
The Nougat update brings with it many new features, bug fixes and noticeable improvements like new Quick Settings controls, an improved battery saver mode, security updates, 70 plus new Emoji and the most important feature, multi-window support.
The extent of Android fragmentation
As per data directly from
What is astonishing is that
Analysis: The reason behind Android’s glacial updates
Android updates lag far far behind the standard set by Apple. While Google's own Nexus and Android One line-up usually get the update in a timely manner, the situation is dismal for the rest of the Android devices.
The tendency of manufacturers to heavily skin and modify stock Android is one the major reasons for this snail's pace of Android updates. Every manufacturer, from big weights like Samsung, Sony and LG, to Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi, Huawei and LeEco heavily customizes the stock build of Android according to their own tastes and design preferences, in a bid to differentiate themselves from the crowd.
Hardware manufacturers are responsible for delivering updates to the devices they sell. However, apart from a few flagships, none of the smartphones are supported for more than a year. Forget two updates; some devices never get a major android version update at all.
0 comments:
Post a Comment