Android is known for being extremely fragmented, and it seems like the release of Android 6.0 Marshmallow will be no exception to the rule.

According to the Android Platform Distribution rates for November, Android Marshmallow runs on a tiny 0.3 percent of "active" Android devices. This particular data is collected by signals being sent to the Google Play Store, which identifies which version of Android devices are running.

According to the data, Android 4.4 KitKat is the most popular version of Android by far, accounting for 38 percent of devices, with Android 5.0 and 5.1 Lollipop coming in at 26 percent.

It's important to note that Google only plays a very minor role in the rollout of new versions of Android. After the operating system is released, companies like Samsung, HTC and so on have to perform their own tweaks to the software to enable it to run on their devices to look and feel the way they want. Samsung, for example, has its own custom TouchWiz user interface, which runs on top of Android and makes a Samsung device operate like a Samsung device.

While Android Marshmallow has been rolling out to Nexus devices, which run Google's stock version of Android, for a number of weeks now, there companies like Samsung and HTC, which haven't made the tweaks they want to just yet.

It's likely that, once companies really start pushing Android Marshmallow, the numbers will jump drastically from 0.3 percent to well over 20 percent.

Via: Engadget