Nougat 7.0 and 7.1 now on 7 percent of Android devices

More often than not, the start of a new month usually means two things when it comes to Android.

The first is the release of a new monthly security patch, which we saw earlier this week. The second is the release of the latest Android platform distribution data. Those numbers came out last night, and they show that Android Nougat continues to increase its share of devices.

At the start of April, the combined number of devices running 7.0 and 7.1 had hit 4.9 percent. One month later, just over 7 percent of Android smartphones and tablets out in the wild are now running Nougat.

Once again, 7 percent doesn’t sound particularly impressive. That said, at this same time last year, Marshmallow was only on 4.6 percent of devices. As such, Nougat continues to be on track to outpace Marshmallow.

When it comes to older versions of Android, some unusual things have happened since April. Last month, the number of devices running anything other than Nougat declined across the board. This month, however, 2.3 and 5.1 increased their share of Android slightly. In the case of Gingerbread, it’s now on 1 percent of devices, compared to the 0.9 percent of devices it was on last month. Lolipop 5.1, meanwhile, increased its share by 0.3 percentage points.

In both cases, it’s likely that the absolute number of Android smartphones and tablets running 2.3 and 5.1 decreased. However, they did so at a rate that was lower than other versions of Android, leading to the discrepancy.

[source]Google[/source]