The latest Android devices may now be playing host to Jelly Bean, but as of September, official Google stats suggested just two in ten handsets had upgraded to its predecessor.

Numbers from Android developer Animoca for November, however, suggest such problems are easing.

As detailed in the studio's latest blog post, the firm's own stats - lifted from its Android line-up - suggest 46.1 percent of Android users in the US are now running version 4.0 or better.

Sweet sandwich

Given Jelly Bean – the moniker used for both versions 4.1 and 4.2 – only launched a matter of months ago, it's likely Ice Cream Sandwich makes up the bulk of said figure, though Animoca has still branded the news as representative of an overall "huge increase" in 4.x's take up.

"Today we see Android 4.0.4 in the lead with 31.4 percent share of all Android smartphones and tablets, making it the single most popular version of Android on our network," detailed the developer.

"It is followed by Android 2.3.6 which tenaciously hangs on to a 21.5 percent share, although it will no doubt continue to shrink as newer versions of Google’s mobile operating system supersede it on ever more devices."

One source

Said figures, of course, can't be taken as gospel, given they're based solely on stats sourced from Animoca's own titles.

Indeed, the developer has previously spoken out against claims of fragmentation, suggesting the consumer choice Android provides means its worth the pain developers have to endure to support multiple versions across multiple devices.

"Though there's an awful lot of complaints about fragmentation, ultimately the end-user benefits from a great breadth of choice, which translates to better opportunities that developers can capitalise on," said CEO David Kim back in August.

"The fact that you can go out and find exactly the kind of tablet you want – as opposed to being forced to choose from a handful of models – is a good thing."

[source: Animoca]