At this year’s Google I/O conference, the installed base for the latest release of Android (from a year ago) fell by 20 percent compared to just one year ago, while users stuck on very old versions of Android (four years old or even older) increased by 120 percent, now making up a quarter of Google’s active users. In 2013, just 4.8 percent of Android’s installed base was stuck on a version of Android that old. It was a problem back then, but it’s a crisis level catastrophe today.
Previous efforts to turn things around and get more users on its latest software release, such as 2011’s Android Update Alliance and 2014’s Google One, have ended in failure.