Marshmallow continues to grow: Google data

The latest Google Play distribution data for the seven-day period ending 11 July revealed that the number of Android Marshmallow-based devices had risen to 13.3 per cent - showing a steady rise - while the share of Android Lollipop and Android KitKat powered devices was gradually falling.

Google's Android Marshmallow version, released last year, was last month running on 10.1 per cent, which meant that there had been a rise of 3.2 per cent in a month. To recall, in May, Android Marshmallow was running on 7.5 per cent active Android devices.

Marshmallow-powered devices had definitely increased in recent months, however the growth had been really slow. To compare, Android 6.0 Marshmallow was finally at 1 per cent of active devices in February, five months after its release to Nexus devices.

According to the latest data, Android Lollipop had a total share of around 35.1 per cent of active Android devices (with Android 5.0 Lollipop running on 14.3 per cent of devices and Android 5.1 version at 20.8 per cent) that checked into Google Play compared to 35.4 per cent reported at the beginning of May, a marginal fall of 0.3 per cent in roughly a month.

The Android Developers' webpage showed that Android KitKat version was falling steadily on the charts and now powered 30.1 per cent devices as against 31.6 per cent last month - a decrease of 1.5 per cent.

However, with Nougat well on its way, Marshmallow had only managed net 13.3  per cent of the Android ecosystem, which was up from 10.1 per cent last month. However, both Lollipop and KitKat continued to dominate in terms of global usership. Between them they  represented over 65 per cent of Android devices worldwide. The number of Kitkat users were 30.1 per cent, while Lollipop was still at 35.1 per cent.