Google first released its latest mobile OS Android 7.0 Nougat back in September. Based on the new statistics shared by the tech company, the adoption of the said Android version is still slow compared to its rival Apple's iOS 10. More Android users are yet to upgrade and use Nougat.
According to the Venture Beat, there are only 0.4 percent Android devices that are currently running on Nougat. It a 0.1 percent increase from last month. That's compared to the Android 5.0/5.1 Lollipop with 34 percent of adoption. It is followed by the version prior to Nougat, the Android 6.0 Marshmallow with 26.3 percent up by 2.3 points. Android 4.4 KitKat is not far behind with 24 percent. Those who are still using the Android 4.1/4.2/4.3 Jelly Bean amount to only 12.8 percent. It is 0.9 points less than in November.
Tied at second to the last spot are Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and Android 2.3 Gingerbread with just 1.2 percent. Meanwhile, the Android Froyo maintained its position at 0.1 percent. It should be noted that Google did not include devices that run on Android versions prior to 2.2 Froyo and have less than 0.1 percent adoption. The data also did not cover those with Google Play.
Given that there is more than a billion Android users worldwide, the 0.4 percent adoption for Android 7.0 Nougat could be equivalent to 4 million. It's not a small number as what the percentage made it seem. As for the latest Apple mobile OS, 63 percent of iOS devices are running iOS 10, 29 percent on iOS 9 and 8 percent on previous iOS versions. This is based on Apple's data from App Store that covered until Nov. 27. The figure is way higher than that of its operating system rival.
Though this is the case, Android actually has a global market share of 80.7 percent compared to iOS' 17.7 percent. However, this is probably because iOS is only limited to iPhones while Android are used on a lot more smartphones that include flagship brands from Apple rivals Samsung, Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi and Google. Based on Gartner's data, the widely used mobile OS is ahead of iOS in several markets in Europe, as well as China.
It should be expected that Nougat will not immediately take over its predecessors. Like what usually happens with Android users, many are starting to upgrade to Marshmallow. Nougat will have its turn as the most used Android version.
