Just under half of all Android devices now use JellyBean

Android JellyBean now accounts for just under half of all Android devices, according to new figures released by Google.

The figures were collected by measuring the version of Android devices used to access the Google Play app store over a 14-day period.

According to the figures, 48.6% of all devices running Android are now powered 4.1/4.2/4.3 Android.

A further 20.6% run the previous version, 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, with 69.2% in total running a recent version of Android.

The figures are encouraging for Google, as it represents a significant shift towards more recent versions of Android since the start of the year.

In January, SmartCompany reported 39.3% used Android 4.x, with 29.1% opting for 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, and just 10.2% using 4.1/4.2 Jellybean.

The latest figures also show a significant shift since August, when 40.5% of Android users chose 4.1/4.2/4.3 Jellybean, while the share running 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich declined slightly to 22.5%.

Google also notes that distributions with less than 0.1% distribution are not shown; implying the proportion of devices still running 1.6 Donut or 2.1 Eclair is now negligible.

The balance of the Android user base is divided between 2.2 Froyo (2.2%), 2.3 Gingerbread (28.5%) and Honeycomb (0.1%).

The figures are also in stark contrast to June 2012, when Ice Cream Sandwich ran on just 2.4% of Android devices, while 65% of Android devices ran 2.3 Gingerbread, 19.1% ran 2.2 Froyo, 5.2% ran 2.1 Eclair, and 2.7% ran 3.0 Honeycomb.

4.1 JellyBean was first unveiled on June 27, 2012, and thus was not represented in the figures at the time.

At the time, the spread of different Android versions in use and slow adoption rate for Ice Cream Sandwich prompted fears of the Android platform fragmenting.