Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich has leapt up to a 16 percent install base, according to data collected during the last two weeks of August by Google. That's more than double the install base at the beginning of June, indicating the OS version finally has some momentum.
In June, ICS had reached a paltry 7 percent of Android phones seven months after the OS version was released. Two months before that, it had reached only 2.9 percent of Android phones. ICS's reach is expanding more slowly than that of the previous significant release, 2.3 Gingerbread, which was on 40 percent of Android phones ten months after its initial release.
Manufacturers and carriers have been slow to update phones released with Gingerbread to ICS, but ICS probably got a solid bump from phones like the Samsung Galaxy S III that were released with ICS already installed. Since its introduction on May 29, the Galaxy S III has sold ten million units worldwide.
But ICS is no longer the holy grail of Android OS versions: 4.1 Jelly Bean has now been on the table for a full month, but has so far managed only a 0.8 percent install base.
