Ice Cream Sandwich now on one in 10 Android devices

Ice Cream Sandwich is now installed on more than 10 percent of Android devices, according to Google.

Data collected by the search-turned-mobile giant during the 14-day period that ended yesterday shows that version 4.0 of Google’s mobile operating system is now present on 10.9 percent of all devices. The data was collected from Android devices that accessed Google Play, the Android application store, during the two-week period.

The latest stats, which come less than a week after Android 4.1 Jelly Bean was announced at Google I/O, show a significant jump for Ice Cream Sandwich: a week ago, the OS was around the 7 percent mark.

The increase of 4 percentage points could be put down to a sharp rise in device sales during the past month, which can be largely attributed to the launch of Samsung’s Galaxy S III and HTC’s One X.

All in all, it’s taken more than eight months for Google to reach 10 percent of the total Android base with Ice Cream Sandwich, after the OS was announced in 2011.

And while Ice Cream Sandwich is on the rise, it’s the opposite story for Android 2.3 Gingerbread: the OS fell for the first time, dropping from 65 percent to 64 percent over the same two-week period.

Nonetheless, Gingerbread, first released in December 2010, remains the most popular Android version to date.