Android's Achilles Heel
Marco Arment reports,
89% of iOS devices running Instapaper in the last 60 days have at least iOS 5.0.92% if I only go 2 weeks back.Almost time to require it.
— Marco Arment (@marcoarment) February 11, 2012
Contrast that with Russell Ivanovic's figure for the latest Android OS (Ice Cream Sandwich):
Fun figures: 99.97%(the percentage of Android phones NOT running Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich)
— Russell Ivanovic (@rustyshelf) February 9, 2012
This is not the whole story as Marco's number is for the users of a single app (Instapaper) and I don't know whether Russell's numbers are for the users of Pocket Weather AU and Pocketcasts or generally for the whole Android ecosystem. I still think these numbers are indicative of the state of OS updates in the iOS and Android ecosystems.
Of all the differences between the two ecosystems, this is to me Android's biggest problem. (This assumes that smartphone OS updates will contain many important user-visible changes for some more years.)
