Google tracks the different version numbers of Android devices that access Google Play (nee Android Market) and every month or two we check in to see how the latest versions are doing. The story this month is that Android 4.0, aka Ice Cream Sandwich, has managed to more than double its share since early April — it's now at 7.1 percent. That's a healthy jump, but even so it's hard to avoid pointing out that previous versions of Android are still tenaciously hanging on to significant chunks of Android share. In fact, Android 2.3 increased its share in the previous two months by a small amount. Android 2.2 thankfully shrunk — but it still powers more than double the number of ICS devices accessing the market with 19.1 percent.

We should note that these numbers may not fully reflect the Android ecosystem as they only count devices that access Google Play — however that caveat likely makes things quite a bit worse for ICS's share as the Kindle Fire is also based on an earlier version of Android. Later this month, Google will host its annual Google I/O developer conference and we'll be there. Actually, we'll be there with the following question on our minds: what exactly happened to that committee that was going to figure out how to distribute timely Android OS updates for 18 months after a device's release?



