Android in Aug 2011: Gingerbread 2.3.3 share shoots past 30%

Google just updated the Android version distribution charts and confirmed the continued exponential growth of Gingerbread. The share of the latest smartphone version of their platform has managed to go the 30% mark and is rapidly closing in on Froyo.

The first Android Gingerbread release (2.3), continues to hold just 0.6% of the market and we are expecting it to be forgotten soon as it was skipped by most manufacturers in favor of more recent Gingerbread versions. Android 2.3.3 and 2.3.4, on the other hand, gained 7 percent points and now has a market share of 30.7 - more than twice that of Eclair.

Of course this is hardly a surprise as there are no more smartphones shipping with Eclair now, while manufacturers seem to be improving their update rate. The rapid growth of Android as a whole is also the reason why Gingerbread is now just 20.5 percent points behind Froyo, whereas just two months ago the difference was standing at 42.1 percent points.

Version	Market Share, July	Market Share, August	Change
1.5 Cupcake	1.3%	1.0%	▼0.3%
1.6 Donut	1.8%	1.4%	▼0.4%
2.1 Eclair	13.3%	11.7%	▼1.6%
2.2 Froyo	51.2%	45.3%	▼5.9%
2.3 Gingerbread	0.6%	0.5%	▼0.1
2.3.3 Gingerbread	30.7%	38.2%	▲7.5%
3.0 Honeycomb	0.2%	0.2%	0.0%
3.1 Honeycomb	0.7%	0.9%	▲0.2
3.2 Honeycomb	0.5%	0.7%	▲0.2%

If the current trends continue (and they will either do that or speed up) Gingerbread should have surpass Froyo in by the time Ice Cream sandwich comes up in October. Froyo's share shrunk by 4.2 percent points this month and the 2.2 release in now powering 51.2% of all droids.

The outdated Android smartphone distributions are, unsurprisingly, continuing their march towards oblivion, with 1.5 Cupcake, 1.6 Donut and 2.1 Eclair losing another 2.5 percent points of their total market share. Their shares now stand at 1.0%, 1.8% and 13.3% respectively.

As for the tablet Android release - Honeycomb there are a couple of good news. First, it made a small step forward gaining another 0.1% of the ever-expanding Android market share and second the distribution within Honeycomb itself is shifting towards the new releases.

So while Honecomb 3.0 lost 0.2 percent points, 3.1 stood still at 0.7 and 3.2 gained 0.3% to a total share of 0.5%. The numbers might seem small, but when you consider the huge number of droids out there (that's totals we are talking about here, not just new sales) and the fact that tablets are still a niche market, it's not that bad.

Plus, Honeycomb 3.2 is really the first edition of Honeycomb that we found to be worth spending you hard-earned cash on. With the performance issues cleared out it really stands above the competitors with its functionality so we expect even better days to come for the Android tablets.

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