While the benefits of Android have permeated communities around the globe, its ubiquity comes at a price. Being open to third-parties to thinker with and customize, Android often ends up looking and running quite differently from one device to the next, and that means there's no uniform updates delivery system in place to ensure the vast majority of the population is using the latest code. Conversely, the walled-off garden that Apple's iOS ecosystem is makes a world of difference when it comes to getting the user base onto the new software, and as of November 30, 70% of the public is rocking iOS 9.
Courtesy of Apple, this data exemplifies just how much more efficient Cupertino's approach is when it comes to software updates. A quick Google search returned rather shocking results for the Android camp: only a lousy 0.3% of the world Android population is on the latest Marshmallow update. That's despite Android 6 being released shortly after iOS 9. In fact, even Android 5 Lollipop accounts for just 26% or so of the population, while Android 4.4 KitKat is the leader with a 38% share. That's software released over two years ago.
There's a score of reasons for Android's crappy performance in this area, and the majority of them are very much justifiable — specifically considering the overall quite positive effect the OS has had in terms of making smartphones nearly universally affordable. Nevertheless, a fragmented ecosystem benefits no one and can potentially even endanger users on older software, despite Google's efforts in decoupling a wide array of services from the core in order to be able to push timely updates to them.
Chris Panayotov is a former mobile tech reviewer of phones, tablets and wearables at PhoneArena. However, his contribution to PhoneArena content includes not just reviews, but all kinds of regular and experimental features, such as news stories, buying guides, and an exclusive column on the most notable phones out of Asia.
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