Android in Dec 2011: Gingebread keeps rising, ICS gets 0.6%

We just got the latest numbers on the Android version distributions and it appears that some new trends are shaping up. Gingerbread continues to be the dominant force, but Ice Cream Sandwich has appeared on the map quicker than expected.

Unsurprisingly, the Android 2.3.x Gingerbread releases continued to gain ground fueled by the strong sales over the holiday season. The second Gingerbread release (covering version numbers 2.3.3-2.3.7) is what the majority of newly activated droids were running and it's now powering 54.9% of all Market-accessing devices.

Meanwhile, Android 2.2 Froyo continues to lose ground quickly, its market share dropping by nearly 5 percent points this month alone.

The long outdated Eclair is still the third most popular Android release, but its single-digit market share continues to shrink.

The market share of the tablet-only Android Honeycomb continues to expand - its three releases now powering 3.3% of all droids between them. Tablets were obviously popular gifts this Christmas as this number represents a 28% increase over the 2.4% that Honeycomb had in November.

The good news is that Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich has appeared on the map and is now powering 0.6% of all droids out there. There are actually two ICS releases - one covering versions 4.0 to 4.0.2 and the other Android 4.0.3 - and each of them has a market share of 0.3%. Considering that there are just a couple of smartphones running ICS officially, that's quite a good number.

The two long-forgotten Android releases - 1.5 Cupcake and 1.6 Donut stubbornly refuse to disappear and are still accounting for 1.7% of the droids out there.

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