With Marshmallow on the horizon, Android fragmentation persists, though Lollipop is now running on 21 percent of Android devices, according to recent developer stats from Google
While that figure is higher than some legacy Android versions, it's behind Android Jelly Bean, which still controls over 31 percent of the Android market and KitKat, which owns 39.2 percent of the space.
For years, Google has had difficulty getting devices, which now number over 1 billion, updated to its newer operating systems, largely because those updates are controlled by carriers and phone makers. The issue is a potentially troublesome one for developers who need to design applications that work with the largest number of devices. The Google data suggests apps should still support Jelly Bean, despite it being a few years old.
Meanwhile, Android is set to expand with a new operating system, called Android 6.0 Marshmallow. It doesn't yet have an official launch date, but rumors suggest the platform will be available to customers sometime this month with the launch of new Nexus devices. It's believed that LG and perhaps China-based handset maker Huawei are designing Nexus smartphones that would run Marshmallow.
For its part, Google has said that it continues to work on addressing fragmentation in the Android market, but ultimately all it can do is offer the software to vendors. It's up to those vendors and carriers to roll out the updates to devices, but they are notorious for being slow to update operating systems, if at all.
Google collects its platform data by analyzing what operating systems devices visting its Google Play Store over a period of seven days are running. It provides updates to its distrbution of Android devices each month.