Lollipop grows to 18 percent, KitKat remains most popular Android version

Although virtually all mid-range handsets ship with Android 5.0 Lollipop or later these days, not to mention the flagships, the latest version of Google's mobile operating system still has a long way to the top. The figures released by Google for the distribution of Android versions across all devices that accessed the Google Play Store in the period starting on June 1 and ending August 3 show no big surprises.

These are the new percentages reported by Google and the differences when compared to the previous distribution chart that was published about two months ago:

• Android 2.2 Froyo - 0.3 percent, no change
• Android 2.3.x Gingerbread - 4.6 percent, 1 percent down
• Android 4.0.x Ice Cream Sandwich - 4.1 percent, 1 percent down
• Android 4.1.x-4.3 Jelly Bean - 33.6 percent, 3.8 percent down
• Android 4.4 KitKat - 39.3 percent, 0.1 percent increase
• Android 5.x Lollipop - 18.1 percent, 5.7 percent increase

The growth of KitKat is probably caused by last stocks of devices loaded with them selling at discounted prices, but it is interesting to see that Android 2.2 Froyo simply refuses to disappear. The evolution of these numbers in the coming months will be quite interesting, as Lollipop should finally take off and go near KitKat and Jelly Bean by 2016.