Android 4.1, JellyBean Overtakes Ice Cream Sandwich for the First Time

By Vincent Funaro, Christian Post Reporter Thursday, May 02, 2013

Android 4.1, JellyBean is now being used on more devices than its predecessor Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich.

The software is now present on 28 percent of Android devices. Ice Cream Sandwich is being used on 27.5 percent of all devices.

The most used version of the software is still Android 2.3, Gingerbread which is present on almost 38.4 percent of all devices. The least used versions of Android are Honeycomb and Donut. The two combined are being used on less than 1 percent of Android devices.

This data was compiled using the total number of users of various Android firmware. It allows developers and news writers to have something to base their projects and reports on and is more accurate than the older methods of finding the most popular Android build. Google changed it methods of a determining the most used version last year.

The current method only shows the firmware of active Android devices that visit the Google Play store and yields a better result.

Android Developers states that the new way of data collection "reflects the percentage of those that use the Android and Google Play most "as compared to the old method of tallying those who only use the Google servers.

With the release of new devices coming with Android 4.1, JellyBean pre-installed and updates rolling out, that number should continue to grow at a rapid pace while most of the other builds will continue to shrink. JellyBean should outpace Ice Cream Sandwich even more once the Galaxy S4 and HTC One smartphones are launched in various markets.

Most new, high-end Android devices come running JellyBean. Google is also expected to unveil a new version of the software at Google I/O.