Android KitKat eats up 39% of market; Lollipop still off radar

Android phone makers and carriers are filling up more devices with KitKat. Lollipop? Not so much.

In its latest Android Developers Dashboardposted earlier this week, Google revealed a 39.1 percent market share for Android 4.4 KitKat. Specifically, that percentage reflects the Android devices that visited the Google Play store during the seven days ending January 5.

Launched in October 2013, KitKat has been climbing the charts lately. The 39.1 percent share showed a steady rise from 33.9 percent a month ago, 30.2 percent the prior month and 25 percent in early September.

That's good news for people craving KitKat. But what about Android users who want a taste of Lollipop, the latest version of Google's mobile OS? Google has promoted Lollipop with a brand new design concept known as Material that offers animations and other visual effects. But where is it?

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Android KitKat running on a third of all Android devices

KitKat, which first debuted 31 October, 2013 and made its public appearance on the Nexus 5, hit a usage share of 33.9 percent during the seven-day period ending December 1, beating its nearest rivals Android 4.1 and 4.2 (both codenamed Jelly Bean) which stand at 21.3 percent and 20.4 percent, respectively.

Since Google last released Android usage data back in November, KitKat has grabbed around three percentage points of usage share.

Compare this to iOS 8, which is now running on 60 percent of all iPhone and iPads after only two and a half months. However, even Apple has found it hard to get users to upgrade to iOS 8/8.1.

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Moto G Receiving Android 4.4.3 KitKat OTA Update in India and Other Regions

The Motorola Moto G has according to developer and user reports started receiving the Android 4.4.3 KitKat update over-the-air (OTA), for both its single SIM international variant and dual-SIM India variant.

Motorola had earlier this week announced the start of the roll-out of the Android 4.4.3 KitKat update for its range of Moto E, G and X smartphones.

The good people at the XDA Developers forum have reported the the Android 4.4.3 KitKat OTA update for both Moto G variants is now rolling out, and have noted it to be 169MB in size, and bring the system version to 210.12.32.

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Android 4.4.3 rolls out to Google, Motorola devices

Android 4.4.3 KitKat is starting to flavor several devices, at least those under the purview of Google.

As of Tuesday, the latest Android update had begun rolling out to the Nexus 5 phone and the Wi-Fi variant of the Nexus 7, along with the Google Play versions of Samsung's Galaxy S4, the HTC One M7, the HTC One M8, and Sony's Z Ultra, according to Android Police.

The latest KitKat update doesn't offer any major new features but does carry with it an improved dialer with a new interface and new colors designed to be more user-friendly, according to Motorola. The main goal behind the update, though, is to deliver bug fixes, security patches, and overall stability improvements. One major fix aims to resolve the battery drain that occurs as a result of camera use.

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