A lot has happened again in the Android world: Fortunately, the update to Android 12 has become a permanent task for many manufacturers and is completed with the first wave of the devices, Android 12L and also the first beta of Android 13 was released. Enough reasons to open our statistics again and see what the Android distribution looks like here in the blog. The numbers come as a bit of a surprise this quarter.
We show you here in the blog at irregular intervals and on a case-by-case basis how the Android versions are distributed among our readers. We last looked at the numbers at the end of February for the first Android 13 Developer Preview and now we’re taking the Android 13 beta as another occasion.
We’re seeing interesting growth for Android 12, some of which can’t be clearly explained. The figures come from Google Analytics and may not always be classified by Google with absolute reliability. I’m assuming Android 12L and Android 13 are currently counting towards Android 12.
Android 12 distribution over the last seven months
- August 2021: 1.8 percent
- September 2021: 2.7 percent
- October 2021: 9.4 percent
- November 2021: 23.07 percent
- December 2021: 25.6 percent
- January 2022: 28.28 percent
- February 2022: 42.76 percent
- March 2022: 47.95 percent
- April 2022: 50.15 percent
- May 2022: 64.33 percent (until May 6)
As you can see, Android 12 has made an insanely big leap since the beginning of the year. Of course, the spread is growing with the rollout of Android 12, but the current leap is beyond the scope. Android 12L is not counted separately by Google Analytics, so it counts towards Android 12.
Android 13, on the other hand, is listed, but allegedly only five users have been using the latest version so far. That can’t be true, so I would also count the Android 12 jump to Android 13. Let’s look at the distribution of each version over the past seven months. This is the best place to see at the expense of which versions the jump was made.
The numbers start just before the official launch of Android 12. Since then, the operating system has shown linear growth, especially in the first two and a half months, while there has been stagnation between November and January by Android standards.
In February there was suddenly another big jump, then two months of steady growth and in the current month (May) another jump. I can’t really explain that. As you can see, the growth was mainly at the expense of Android 11. As usual, the older versions are stable and only drop very slowly.
Android 13 does not appear in percentage terms with the five users already mentioned. I assume that Google Analytics will soon recognize this more reliably and that the next time we look at the numbers we will get a clearer view.
Of course, with our comparatively small user base, there is also a certain range of fluctuation and no completely stable numbers as in the global market. Average between 700,000 and 800,000 readers per month with several million views. We’ll continue to monitor the stats and may revisit shortly before the expected release of the final Android 13 version.