Gingerbread has held the monopoly when it comes to the mobile operating system Android. This is something that was looked upon as a negative growth when it came to the smartphone sector. Until recently, a large portion of Android smartphones in the market were running an outdated Gingerbread version of the operating system. Google’s surveys reveal that this is no longer the case. The recent statistics suggest that Gingerbread has been finally overtaken by the most recent version of Android OS known as Jelly Bean.
The survey sample
Google releases figures and statistics pertaining to the distribution of the Android OS every month. The figures are based on the number of smartphones that access Google Play services. This data is aimed at helping the app developers to create apps that can be used by a majority of smartphone users all over the world. The report is used to determine what specific function to target in a particular OS. The reports are also used by Android’s competitors and media to get a sense of what versions of Android are leading the market.
Google recently changed its method of reporting Android distribution. Earlier, Google’s reports consisted of all the phones that accessed Google services including Gmail and Google search on their smartphones. Now the report consists of only those phones that access the Google Play app store. Google says that this change has been in place in order to make sure that the developers get a more accurate data by indicating the users that most frequently shop for Apps. This may have created some problems as the actual Android distribution figures could be very different.
Is Jelly Bean really the leader?
A large number of analysts believe that the Android distribution method may have raised several questions about the accuracy of reports. This is because, a large number of budget smartphones continue to be shipped with Gingerbread as the default operating system in many parts of the world. So a question arises whether Jelly Bean has truly overtaken Gingerbread? If you ponder over it for a while, you will definitely come to a conclusion that Jelly Bean has truly overtaken Gingerbread.
Almost all of the biggest releases of this year include Jelly Bean. Devices such as the formidable Galaxy S4 have already sold as many as 20 million handsets worldwide. Other than this, a large number of users too are upgrading their smartphones from Gingerbread to Jelly Bean in order to get maximum functionality. Then of course there is the threat of the Master Key vulnerability that is prevalent in all the older versions of Android. Google has fixed this vulnerability in Jelly Bean and this has definitely attracted more users.
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