Jelly Bean occupies 10% of Android devices

As the gradual adoption of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich continues, its successor Jelly Bean is also picking up steam. The latest numbers from Google show that 29.1 percent of Android devices that recently accessed Google Play were running Ice Cream Sandwich, compared to 15.9 percent last August and a mere .6 percent this time last year. Jelly Bean 4.1 and 4.2 combined, meanwhile, are now on 10.2 percent of devices, up dramatically from the .8 percent we saw in August. Jelly Bean passed the 10 percent mark a couple of months earlier than Ice Cream Sandwich, which officially did so around the launch of the Nexus 7 in July.

The update between Android 2.3 Gingerbread and 4.0 was more dramatic than the change from 4.0 to 4.1, and juggernaut Samsung has been pushing Jelly Bean to its flagship phones, so it's not necessarily surprising that adoption is a bit faster so far. Even less surprisingly, Gingerbread has maintained a substantial 47.6 percent — though this is actually the first time we've seen it drop below half the Android install base according to Google's numbers.

Some smartphone and tablet owners may still be waiting for Android’s Jelly Bean update, but statistics from Google indicate that the number of devices running Android 4.1 and 4.2 is continuing to grow each month.

Over the past month in particular, traffic in the Google Play store from Jelly Bean devices has seen a sharp increase. Data collected during a two-week period that ended on Jan. 3 shows that Jelly Been usage has risen to 10.2 percent. This is a significant milestone for the operating system considering it only measured in at 6.2 percent when it was measured at the same time last month.

The Jelly Bean statistics include a mix of Android 4.1 and Android 4.2 traffic in the Google Play store over the past month. Despite this climb, Android 2.3 Gingerbread is still the most widely used operating system by a long shot. Gingerbread accounted for a whopping 47.6 percent of all Android usage from Dec. 3 through Jan. 3. Android 2.3 and 2.3.2 claim most of this market share with 47.4 percent, and Android 2.3.3 through 2.3.7 contribute .2 percent.

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is the second most popular operating system claiming 29.1 percent of Android users, and Jelly Bean has impressively bumped its way up to third place.

This increase in Jelly Bean usage follows what seems to be a trend in growth for the seven month old operating system. The statistics that came in from last month showed that Jelly Bean more than doubled its usage compared to the same period measured in October. To be exact, this number grew from 2.7 percent to 6.7 percent during a two-week time frame two months ago.

Google introduced the Jelly Bean mobile software at its I/O developers’ conference last June, with its Galaxy Nexus-branded devices receiving the update just after it launched. Since then carriers have made moves to roll Jelly Bean out on a more massive scale, and this surge could be attributed to a significant end-of-the-year push. Google also unveiled its second generation of Jelly Bean, Android 4.2, in mid-November alongside the release of its Nexus 10 tablet and Nexus 4 handset.

Samsung recently introduced its own line of enhancements to pair with Google’s Jelly Bean operating system on its Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note devices. Labeled as the Premium Suite features, these additions bring more multitasking and social functions to the Galaxy S3, Note and Note 2.