Is Kitkat Killing Lollipop Uptake?

BarbaraHudson writes Remember how Windows XP was "good enough" that people took forever to upgrade? The same might be happening with Kitkat vs Lollipop. "According to Google's latest Google Play Store results for early January 2015, less than 0.1 percent of all Android devices were using Lollipop. By comparison, the last major Android release 4.4, KitKat, reached 1.1 percent of its audience in its first month out. In January 2015, almost two months in for Lollipop, KitKat is still number one with 39.1 percent of the market. It's followed by the various Jelly Bean versions, 4.1.x with 19.2 percent; 4.2.x with 20.3 percent, and 4.3 with 6.5 percent. Trailing them is Ice Cream Sandwich, 4.03-04 with 7.8 percent, followed by antique Froyo, 2.2, with 0.4 percent."

Comments

Why do I want to upgrade?

[91degrees]

What would using Lollipop do for me that whatever version of Android I'm currently using not? Is there a major benefit?

Re:Why do I want to upgrade?

[TheRaven64]

Does it also come with UI regressions, like the change around 3-4 that turned putting the clock into night mode from a one-tap operation into a 4 tap sequence?

Re: Why do I want to upgrade?

[Chrisq]

Doesn't it include performance and power management improvements?

I don't know if it was the OS or google play services (I got an update for both at the same time, but in KitKat google play services used 20% of my battery doing not a lot. Searches shown that a number of other people had this issue, but strangely not everyone. With Lolipop its down to a few percent. It also has "battery saver mode", which as far as I can work out disables background everything and dims the display. Useful if you want to ensure that your battery lasts for calls and SMS, but you won't get any facebook, email, or other notifications

Re:Why do I want to upgrade?

[greenfruitsalad]

Doesn't matter whether you go up or down from Android 4.4, but at least for me, the inability to use SD card properly makes it a broken system.

I'll probably downgrade my phone from 4.4 to 4.3 if there's no lollipop for my device.

Lollipop = Windows Vista

[bradley13]

Part of the problem is that Lollipop offers little new, but does destroy existing functionality. Google Calendar is much less usable than before. Personal and business email is now handled by the same application, making it much more difficult to keep private and business separate. Etc..

In return, we now have fancy animations when you touch the screen, gee, golly, wow. Oh, and existing, well-known icons have been redesigned; just as an example, to go to your home screen you no longer press the house icon, now you press a circle. I'm sure some designer is real proud of that, but they must have forgotten the user-testing.

Lollipop is Google's version of Windows Vista. I'm sure they'll fix it, but in the meantime I wish I could do a rollback to KitKat...

Re:Manufacturers

[sr180]

I bought my Nexus4 specifically as it is NOT tied to a carrier.

So did many others, and it doesnt matter. As Telstra Australia users have found, if you have their sim in the phone, Telstra restricts the updates - even though the phone wasnt bought through Telstra. Want the update? Simple drop another carrier's sim in the phone (who isnt restricting it - ie any other Australian carrier), and the update is instantly available. Update - return back to your Telstra sim. (I believe Telstra has started rolling out the update recently however.)

There is no Lollipop update

[pablo_max]

"There is no Lollipop upgrade available for any of my devices yet."

There is no Lollipop update for almost all devices!. How the hell should anyone update.
Seriously, do the jack asses that write these articles think that you can just install whatever the heck you want like a PC? I think they have a fundamental misunderstanding of the Android ecosystem.