logoalt Hacker News

bilkowtoday at 3:27 PM1 replyview on HN

There seem to be updated stats here: https://composables.com/android-distribution-chart

Which seems to indicate about 4.8% are below Android 9.

But also, Firefox for Android still supports Android 8, of which there are 1.7% below.

There's a discussion to be made here about who is dropping support for these users, is it Google (and especially Apple, who doesn't allow other browsers on iOS) or the site owner? Especially given how insecure it is to use outdated browsers.


Replies

nchmytoday at 4:46 PM

You're misinterpreting the stats. Those are not "updated" - they're from Dec 1, 2025 and are the latest that are available from Android Studio (I just checked again).

If you add up the distribution inclusive of Android 9 (which is what I was trying to refer to, perhaps unsuccessfully), it is 9.2%. That corresponds with the 90.7% Cumulative Distribution for Android 10

If you're arguing that it is Google who is dropping support/making people have insecure browsers, we're in agreement. As with Safari (or at least those at Apple who control/fund Safari), the Android team is very anti-Web/Chrome. Lots has been written about all of that at https://infrequently.org.

Also, since this article/post is about 98%, Android 7 and below account for 2% of usage still, and its max Chrome version is 124, which was released in April 2024.