Android Lollipop adoption gaining momentum, nearing 10%

Google has updated its Android distribution data this evening to reflect numbers collected during a 7-day period ending on May 4th, 2015. Android Lollipop, which has been struggling to gain adoption since its official release, grew to 9.7 percent this time around, up from just over 5 percent at this time last month. More specifically, Android 5.0 is running on 9 percent of devices, while Android 5.1 is on just .7 percent of devices.

KitKat still holds the title as the most used version of Android with 41.4 percent, down from 39.8 percent last month. As expected, Jelly Bean fell from 40.7 percent to 39.3 percent, Ice Cream Sandwich fell to 5.3 percent, and Gingerbread declined to 5.7 percent. Froyo is clinging to .3 percent of the market.

The slow rollout of Android Lollipop has certainly been disappointing to users, but as we report on almost daily, many devices are gradually receiving their Android 5.0 and Android 5.1 updates. The launch of the Galaxy S6 and HTC One M9 will certainly help distribution data, as well.

Android distribution data is collected by tracking which versions of Android visit the Google Play Store most often during a 7-day testing period at the end of every month. For this reason, the data does not include devices running anything lower than Android 2.2, as they do not support the required version of the Play Store app.