Google isn’t building an software/hardware ecosystem, it’s building an ad empire. It justs needs its footprint calling back home on as most devices as possible. I don’t think it ever cared about which android version is highest (except for PR)
It’s quite sad that Google never figured out a way around this issue. The real problem is that they push the responsibility of updating to OEMs, which have no interest in updating their “old phones” (1 year old in most cases) because a new shiny one has been released.
I think the only way to really solve this is to make Android like Windows used to be back in the XP days. OEMs get a base system and they can customize it to their hearts content, but the updates to the base always come straight from the OS developer, no matter if the “OEM customizations” are ready for it or not.
This is really how Google should have built things in the beginning. Provide a stable driver API for hardware then upgrade the OS as needed without OEM cooperation. They are just now getting around to it with things like Treble, IIRC.
Even with things like Treble the updates still have to come from the OEM, so unfortunately I don’t see the situation changing any time soon.
this is how Android has been forever. Jellybean was the most popular until around Nougat.
People keeping their phones for a longer time shouldn’t be considered a bad thing. Cheap brands using old versions isn’t good though and that does represent some of the numbers.
I feel like at this point Google should ditch the annual OS level-up. Phones and their OSs have matured and pushing out a new version every year is just increasing the support Google has to provide without much benefit. I was running Android 9 until recently, and while I’m now on the 14 beta, I could easily see my current phone lasting long enough to outlive the current 5 years of security updates promised.
