Android Nougat takes over Marshmallow to become the most used version of Android

Android Nougat has finally won over Marshmallow to be the most commonly used version of the smartphone operating system.

Nougat , launched in August 2016, is now runs on 28.5 percent of Android devices, according to data from Google developers blog, a bit ahead of Marshmallow, which accounts for 28.1 percent. Android Marshmallow debuted in October 2015.

Google has always struggled in the past to get smartphone makers to upgrade devices to the most recent Android releases. The latest version of Android : Android Oreo, released in March last year is currently running on just 1.1 percent of Android devices. 

Credits: Google

It's worth mentioning that Oreo percentage is even less than the good old Android Jellybean, which has been around since July 2012. The amusing part -- 0.3 percent of users are still using -- presumably antique and creaking -- phones that are running the forgotten Gingerbread, which arrived way back in 2010, Whoops !, It's been more than seven years.

Google has no way to force Android smartphone makers to upgrade their devices to the latest version of the mobile OS, so there tend to be many different versions in use. Many vendors will only offer the latest version of Android on their newest handsets, in order to encourage users to upgrade.

In contrast, Apple devices get updates quite quickly, since Apple controls hardware and software domains of their devices, it can drive upgrades faster. Apple's most recent data shows that 65 percent of iPhones are now running iOS 11, the latest version, while 28 percent are on iOS 10 (That's still not TOO old, released September 2016).

The remaining are most likely to be older devices with incapable hardware that cannot support the recent versions of iOS.

While Google has tried to remove this fragmentation of Android OS with its Project Treble incorporated with Android Oreo, it remains to be seen how far it can go to help deliver quicker updates.