Comment by nchmy
1 day ago
Its hard to find these stats now (need to use Android Studio), but about 10% of android users are on Android v9 and below. Android 9 support was recently discontinued by Chromium, such that they cannot update past Chromium 138.
So, 10% of android users dont have web features beyond, at best, June 2025.
caniuse.com does not track this - they lump all Chrome for android together in the latest version.
This is painful as someone who wants to make use of some very useful, powerful new features, but is targeting people who are most likely to have old, slow, not-updated devices...
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.
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.
Ah you're right! You were actually very clear by saying Android 9 or below, but I misinterpreted while multitasking here, sorry for that.
> 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.
Oh, haven't seen that blog before. Incredible resource, thanks! And yeah, Google, Apple, and also a situation with vendors (e.g. Qualcomm, due to drivers) that makes it so miserable. Not only due to the way they favor their stores, but also indirectly due to how hard they make to have updated or custom OSes for older devices. I believe it's a consequence of the amount of control they exert, Apple by plainly not allowing bootloader unlocking and Google by gatekeeping essential APIs (especially Play Integrity) on "secure" (read: controlled by Google) OSes.
It's a bit insane that we live in two completely different realities on desktop vs mobile, where it's easy to install a current OS and browser in 15+ year old computers but can't even have an up-to-date browser on an 8 year old device, much less and up-to-date OS.
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