73% Of Android Devices Runs on Gingerbread

According to the research, 73 percent of Android devices run on the Gingerbread OS or an Android 2.3 variant. Froyo, also known as href=”http://code.google.com/android/” rel=”homepage” target=”_blank” title=”Android”>Android 2.2, gobbles another large slice of the pie with 23 percent. Meanwhile, 61 percent of Android devices have 4-or 4.3-inch screens, with 62 percent of Android displays sporting an 800-by-480 resolution. The higher 960-by-540 resolution only maintains a meager 6 percent of screens.

Screen resolution and size are actually even less fragmented than handsets – 74% of Android tablet usage takes place on 7 inch devices with 1024 x 600 resolution. 22% are 10.1 inch devices with 1280 x 800 resolutions, so by taking into account two screen size/resolution combinations, developers should be able to easily reach nearly all of the Android tablet market.

OS distribution is similarly stable, with 71% of Android tablets running Android 2.3 “Gingerbread”. Most of the remaining tablets are running some flavor of Android 3 “Honeycomb” – 14% are powered by Android 3.2, 7% by 3.1. The rest run “Froyo”.

“In all, while href=”http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html” rel=”homepage” target=”_blank” title=”Android Developers”>Android developers do have to think about an element of fragmentation foreign to iOS developers, the problem seems to be much smaller than made out to be. Android devices, particularly tablets, tend to be very similar in OS version, screen size and screen resolution,” reported href=”http://www.localytics.com/” rel=”homepage” target=”_blank” title=”Localytics”>Localytics. “Although iOS developers only have two form factors to craft their applications for, the similarities of Android’s most-used devices should make it less of a challenge to develop for than often thought.”