Android Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean adoption stalls

Google has revealed that despite its best efforts adoption of its newer Ice Cream Sandwich and latest Jelly Bean Android versions is still moving at a snail's pace.

A massive 53.9 percent of Android devices are still running on the out-of-date Gingerbread OS, marking a mere 2.1 percent drop from the previous month's figures, according to the latest figures on the Android Developer Blog.

Below it adoption of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich crept forward, increasing two per cent and now running on 25.8 percent of all Android devices.

At the very bottom Jelly Bean remained the least-used Android version, only running on 2.7 percent of all active Android devices. The figure marks a 0.9 percent increase on the figures recorded in the previous month.

Jelly Bean's low penetration figures follow the same pattern set by Ice Cream Sandwich, which only accounted for 1.6 percent four months after its release in late 2011.

The slow adoption rate of new Android versions is doubly damning due to the inherent security problems fragmentation in the ecosystem can cause.

Security vendors have consistently complained that the fragmentation makes patching the OS for newly discovered vulnerabilities more difficult and time consuming.

Jelly Bean was unveiled alongside the Nexus 7 tablet in July and boasts a host of new features.

These include increased integration with the Google Play Store, Google Now and Project Butter, a new code integrated into the OS that helps speed up performance.

For a full look at Jelly Bean check out V3's interactive guide and in depth written review.