Software updates are supposed to be welcome. They patch bugs that cause problems, add new features to hardware, and generally make things run more efficiently. The problem for Google and its Android operating system has been getting phone carriers and others to take advantage of them.
Gradually, it is making some progress.
According to Android's developer dashboard, its latest Jelly Bean operating system can be found on just over 10 percent of all Android devices. When these statistics were calculated the previous month, Jelly Bean was only tallying up around 6 percent of devices, so this represents a significant increase for Google's newest offering.
Meanwhile, use of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich also improved, making up 29.1 percent of the device share.
Despite these gains, however, most Android users are still operating on a significantly older update. Android 2.3 Gingerbread's share may be falling, but it's still running on an impressive 47.6 percent of all devices.
Does it really matter? Many people get by fine on the Gingerbread system, but they are locked out of certain features that were introduced in later versions of Android. Even if some apps are supposed to incorporate them, they cannot be used without the proper updates. This potentially makes it more difficult for app developers who need to create programs that will run on each update to ensure maximum exposure to Android users.
Fortunately, more carriers have started to roll out the latest updates to their customers. Just last month, Verizon began offering Jelly Bean 4.1 for the Samsung Galaxy S3 while there's been a boost in other updates during the last couple months of 2012. Galaxy S2 support has just been detailed on Monday.
Google revealed Android 4.1 Jelly Bean at its I/O developer conference in June, along with the 4.2 update in November. New features included the ability switch between multiple users, and allowing people to share videos on an HDTV.
"We want things to be simple, beautiful, and really smart," said Android product management Hugo Barra of Jelly Bean back at the I/O developer conference.
