Nougat adoption touches 5% in April; Marshmallow, Lollipop continue their domination

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Those 20% on kitkat and the 10-12% on earlier versions are mostly on devices whose support have ended. So not expected that to change by updating. That percentage will eventually drop when those phones become unoperational..
But over 30% still on marshmallow, and more importantly over 30% still in lollipop after almost 9 months of nougat launch is a worrying sign.

Google should bring the oems under regulation, because you can still find phones in the market that come with lollipop preinstalled! Maybe making it compulsory for manufacturers to ship all devices launced after <so and so> months of latest android version released should ship with the latest android version. Also make them give updates for the old devices within <so and so> month after google updates their old nexus/pixel devices...
 
Agreed with RP.8

They should add some kind of EOL (End Of License) policy and after that period no one can distribute or sell the software. That way new buyers will always get latest version be it low end or high end model!
 
With Google play services installed on phone Google can update most of of the software of Android except core Android. So another option is to move more components of android to Playstore so that even if you are on old android still you will be able to run latest apps.

 
Sarkar said:
With Google play services installed on phone Google can update most of of the software of Android except core Android. So another option is to move more components of android to Playstore so that even if you are on old android still you will be able to run latest apps.
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Ya, but that'd make releasing newer versions pointless, or atleast less appealing. Tightening the grip on OEMs and carriers is the only way now. Because if they're slapped with deadlines, they'll be starting to work on newer versions from google's first alpha release itself, instead of waiting for the final release candidate like they usually do now..
 
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Tha.RP8 said:
Ya, but that'd make releasing newer versions pointless, or atleast less appealing. Tightening the grip on OEMs and carriers is the only way now. Because if they're slapped with deadlines, they'll be starting to work on newer versions from google's first alpha release itself, instead of waiting for the final release candidate like they usually do now..
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Android's open nature has made it successful. So if you try to ring fence OEM then they will move to some other ROM without google play services like you hv in China as a result google's revenue is almost zero from China, there is also legal issue for Google in Europe so over all forcing OEM will hurt google more than keeping it as it is.

 
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Sarkar said:
Android's open nature has made it successful. So if you try to ring fence OEM then they will move to some other ROM without google play services like you hv in China as a result google's revenue is almost zero from China, there is also legal issue for Google in Europe so over all forcing OEM will hurt google more than keeping it as it is.
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China issue is very different, bro. Because most google services are banned in China, there is an entire ecosystem of alternate apps that whole of China uses and are used to. But in rest of the world, people have been using the massive google ecosystem, and until they exist, making people ditch google services and take up their own would not be easy. Remember how windows phone flopped, it was mainlky because people were reluctant to move from the android ecosystem.

Of course android should remain open to customizations, and they will be. Thats the usp of android after all!! What I'm saying that they need to ensure that the rollout of those oem/carrier customized versions are faster. Look how oems work on updates at present. They wait for google to launch the stable release, then they start developing their version of it. This should change to starting a parellel release cycle from after the first aplha release by google so that by the time google releases the stable android, the oems atleast are in th position to release the first beta of their rom based on that android version.

For that, there needs to be an EOL policy for atleast new phones, so that there won't be new phones that ship with, say lollipop when the era should be of nougat!

Another way would be to introduce competition by launching mid range and budget phones from google's side (like they used to smack down samsung's heavyweight touchwiz with moto g and x when they had motorola). Launching phones for multiple slabs running bloatware-less and fast-updated android would make other manufactures step on the pedal more, in fear of losing out on competition..
 
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There are thousands of devices in different hardware configuration. If you force oem to give updates for a certain period then that will cause huge price rise so android will not be affordable as it is currently. That's the main reason why very few people uses ios.

Now we can argue that why oem modify android. They should give pure android so that Google can update those phones directly without much oem interference. But the fact is people hate pure/bare android which google provides. Otherwise android one project which google launched few years ago would hv been huge success by now. If it fails that means people don't bother about what version of Android or security it is running. For them what matters is that it should hv the functionality which is required for him. That forces oem to modify android heavily.

one more issue is that When you sell android as low as Rs 3K how can you force oem to give 2 years software support for that phone ?

 
You didn't get what I was saying in the prev comment, I was stressing about devices which are being sold out of the box with outdated Android versions, updating old phones is also another issue to be addressed but bigger issue is new phones with old android. Because if new phones continue to launch with outdated Android versions, the fragmentation problem will never stop. 

OEM customizations are necessary, because thats the biggest power of open source software. If everyone starts using stocl android, it'll become boring. Take a Motorola in one hand, and take a xiaomi on the other hand, they're so different, but still gets everything done in almost the same way. But that doesn't mean turning android into a bloated, buggy and laggy piece of crap like Samsung's older TouchWiz versions. Also, customization does not mean progress should be slowed down. Setting up competition will make sure ther will be a balance between customization and progress. (like Samsung's improvements to TouchWiz after Motorola popularity).

Google doesn't sell Android to oems bro, they give it free. They only charge for the Google services and apps to be pre-installed and tested. Moreover, though 2 years support by oems may be too much, in fact many of them don't even give 1 year support because if they did, from the 30% devices still in lollipop, many of them would be running marshmallow atleast.
 
1. Definition of bloatware will vary as something which is not useful to me is a bloatware for me. So those who do not use Google services for them all google apps are bloatware. I personally don't use Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft apps so all are bloatware for me. So there should be an option to uninstall all apps including Google's own from android so that people can free up storage. That's the whole issue in European Union and Google legal battle.

2. Android is free so manufacturers are free to install whatever version u want. They install old Android as there is no software development cost if they put old version this way they can sell device at very cheap prices.

Now if you put the end date in licensing conditions then manufacturers will simply ship phones without Google services pre-installed to keep the price as low as possible bcoz for people price is the number one priority while purchasing phone. I don't think google wants that.

 
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