It has been quite awhile since Chitika Insights last covered Android Fragmentation. At the time of the analysis, we saw the surprising result of Android Gingerbread lagging behind; it possessed less than one percent of all our North American Android traffic. Given that the operating system was released a full three months before, it was quite a lackluster debut, and it left Froyo with over 88% of the Android market share.
Four months later, we decided to take another look at the changes in the Android market. This time, though, Gingerbread finally seems to make the impact we expected:
Or, in table form:
| Version | Market Share |
| Under 1.5 | 0.026% |
| 1.5 | 1.674% |
| 1.6 | 1.353% |
| 2.1 | 0.849% |
| 2.2 | 30.414% |
| 2.2.1 | 36.783% |
| 2.2.2 | 14.728% |
| 2.3 | 15.013% |
| 2 other | 0.007% |
| 3.0 | 0.646% |
| 3.1 | 1.657% |
| 3.2 | 0.001% |
Four months ago, the disappointing Nexus One made up the plurality of Android Gingerbread sightings, but thanks to Gingerbread coming to the HTC Evo 4G, this has also changed drastically:
While Froyo is still by far the dominant version of Android, with 2.2.2 almost equal to 2.3, the absorption of market share by the newer Gingerbread is encouraging for all the 2.3 fans. Also, this Evo-induced boom in momentum comes on the heels of the Ice Cream Sandwich release. For developers, any version 2.1 or lower makes up a mere 3.9% of the market, meaning that it’s becoming progressively less important to create applications that are compatible with the older versions of the operating system.
The jump of Gingerbread does show us one thing, however; fragmentation is a fickle beast that is one major phone release away from wild changes.
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