We in the Sony community tend to bitch and moan a bit (and perhaps rightly so when we look at how things march on in iOS land) when it comes to how long OS upgrades take. We’ve always known that this phenomenon wasn’t unique to Sony, seeing how fragmented Android is, but new data shows that most Android device makers have yet to bring the year old Marshmallow to their phones.

Vlad Savov writing for The Verge:

Two weeks shy of Google detailing the next big revision of Android at its annual developer conference, the current Android version is still struggling to make its way out to devices. Android 6.0 Marshmallow is currently running on just 7.5 percent of active Android devices that have access to the Google Play Store. The rest of the field is dominated by 2014’s Android Lollipop at 35.6 percent, 2013’s KitKat at 32.5 percent, and 2012’s Jelly Bean at 20.1 percent. 2011’s Ice Cream Sandwich still clings on to a stubborn 2 percent and the immortal Android Gingerbread (version 2.3!) accounts for 2.2 percent of Android smartphones.

This is frankly quite terrible. On the other side of the fence, iOS 9, which was released in late September, currently enjoys 84% adoption rate which is actually ‘low’ for Apple. Don’t be surprised to see that number surpass 90% prior to iOS 10’s release.

New features aside, as we’ve seen going forward, privacy and encryption are going to play a big part in our lives and the more outdated the OS, the more vulnerable our devices are to hacks and exploitations. Hopefully in the future, Google can figure out a better way to enforce OS updates on device makers or at least make the process easier on them as whatever they’re doing today simply isn’t working.

Discuss:

What version of Android are you running on your phone?