The popularity of the Android OS is nothing short of mind-boggling. Android is the most popular mobile operating system—and it’s not a close contest. Android is utilized on tens of thousands of devices across the world, including vehicles, watches, televisions, and more.
Android is the most widely used operating system on earth, and also one of the easiest to describe badly, because four different organisations measure four different things and the results get quoted as if they were interchangeable.
Before the numbers, what each source actually counts:
- Google reports active devices. That is hardware in use, not people, and one person may have a phone, a tablet and a watch.
- StatCounter measures web usage: the share of page views coming from each platform. It is not installed base and not sales.
- IDC measures vendor shipments into the channel, by manufacturer rather than by operating system.
- Nobody publishes a current count of Android smartphone users. There is no official figure, and anything presented as one has been derived from something else.
Each figure below names its source and the month or quarter it covers. Where two measures look contradictory, it is usually because they are answering different questions.
Key Android Statistics for 2026
- Google says Android runs on more than 3 billion active devices in over 190 countries.
- Android accounted for 69.17% of worldwide mobile OS web usage in September 2026, with iOS at 30.81%.
- Android 16 led version usage at 37.6% in September 2026, up from about 25.8% a month earlier.
- Global smartphone shipments were 276.3 million in Q2 2026, down 7.4% year over year.
- Samsung shipped 62.7 million smartphones for 22.7% of the market, ahead of Apple’s 55.7 million.
- Google blocked more than 1.75 million policy-violating apps from Play and banned over 80,000 developer accounts in 2025.
- Play Protect scans more than 350 billion Android apps every day.
- More than 600 million gamers use Play Games Services monthly, out of over 2 billion monthly active players on Google Play.
Android Statistics 2026
Google itself publishes very little about Android, but what it does publish is the strongest ecosystem evidence available.
1. Google acquired Android in July 2005.
(Source: Google)
Google bought Android Inc. in July 2005, two years before the iPhone and three before the first commercial Android handset shipped in 2008. The purchase is often described as one of the best acquisitions in technology, which is hard to argue with given where the platform ended up.
2. Android runs on more than 3 billion active devices.
(Source: Google, May 2025)
Google describes Android as “the world’s most popular OS with more than 3 billion active devices in over 190 countries”.
This is the single most useful Android figure, and the one most often misquoted. It counts active devices, not people. Phones, tablets, watches, TVs and cars all count, and a household with several Android devices contributes several. It is not a user count, and the figure this page previously carried, 1.6 billion Android users, was neither current nor measuring the same thing. Google has not published an updated total since, so treat 3 billion as a floor rather than a number that grows each time someone writes about it.
3. More than 500 million active devices are large or adaptive.
(Source: Google)
Google tells developers they can reach more than 500 million active large and adaptive devices, a category spanning foldables, tablets, XR headsets, Chromebooks and compatible cars.
This is a developer-opportunity metric rather than a clean subset: it is counted to make the case for building apps that adapt to different screens, and it should not be subtracted from the 3 billion total as though those were separate populations. It does say something real about where Android has spread beyond the phone.
Android vs iOS Usage Share
The familiar Android-versus-iOS percentages come from StatCounter, which measures the share of web page views coming from each platform. It is a usage measure, not a sales or installed-base one.
4. Android accounted for 69.17% of mobile OS web usage in September 2026.
(Source: StatCounter, September 2026)
StatCounter put Android at 69.17% of worldwide mobile operating system web usage in September 2026, against 30.81% for iOS.
Two cautions. First, this is web traffic: it reflects how much browsing happens on each platform, which is influenced by how people use their devices and by regional internet patterns, not just by how many devices exist. iOS consistently over-indexes relative to its share of hardware, because iPhone users browse more in wealthier markets where page views are counted. Second, the figure moves month to month, and did: August 2026 showed Android at about 67.6%, a point and a half lower. Read the trend, not the month. For how this compares with desktop and the wider picture, see our operating system market share figures.
5. Android and iOS together account for essentially all mobile web usage.
(Source: StatCounter, September 2026)
Adding the two together leaves a fraction of a percent for everything else, split between Samsung’s own OS, KaiOS, Linux and Windows.
The duopoly is real, and worth stating carefully: it describes mobile web usage in StatCounter’s sample during one month. The old claim on this page that Android held “more than 72% of the OS market” mixed this usage series with sales-share data from somewhere else, which is exactly the error to avoid. If you want the iOS side in detail, our Apple statistics cover the company’s own disclosures.
Smartphone Shipments by Vendor
IDC tracks how many handsets manufacturers ship into the channel each quarter. This is a different measurement again: it counts hardware leaving factories by brand, not operating systems in use.
6. Global smartphone shipments were 276.3 million in Q2 2026.
(Source: IDC, final Q2 2026 data)
IDC’s final figures for the second quarter of 2026 put total global smartphone shipments at 276.3 million units, down 7.4% year over year.
The decline has an unusually specific cause. IDC notes that memory costs are up nearly 300% from a year earlier and now account for over 65% of the bill of materials at the low end, which squeezes budget-focused manufacturers hardest and favours premium vendors. A falling shipment total in this context says more about component pricing than about demand for smartphones.
7. Samsung shipped 62.7 million smartphones for 22.7% of the market.
(Source: IDC, final Q2 2026 data)
Samsung led the quarter with 62.7 million units shipped and 22.7% of global shipments.
Samsung’s share is not Android’s share, and the two get conflated constantly. Samsung is the largest Android manufacturer, but it accounts for under a quarter of all smartphones shipped, while Android runs on roughly seven in ten devices by usage. The gap is filled by dozens of other manufacturers.
8. Apple, Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo made up the rest of the top five.
(Source: IDC, final Q2 2026 data)
Behind Samsung in Q2 2026: Apple at 55.7 million units (20.2%), Xiaomi at 31.2 million (11.3%), OPPO at 28.9 million (10.5%) and vivo at 21.2 million (7.7%). Everyone else combined shipped 76.6 million units, 27.7% of the market.
That “others” category being larger than any single vendor except Samsung is the structural fact about Android: it is a platform shared by a long tail of manufacturers, which is why no one brand’s numbers describe it.
9. You cannot derive Android’s share by subtracting Apple.
(Source: methodology note)
It is tempting to take 276.3 million shipments, remove Apple’s 55.7 million and call the remainder Android. It does not work, and it is worth saying why.
Shipments are not usage: a phone shipped in June may not be sold or activated for months. Not every non-Apple handset runs Google-certified Android, particularly in China, where many devices run Android forks without Google services. And shipments count new hardware only, while usage reflects the entire installed base including devices bought years ago. The old claim here that “more than 1.3 billion Android smartphones were sold in 2019” came from exactly this kind of derivation, and no clean Android-only shipment total exists in IDC’s public data.
Google Play Security and Audience
Google publishes more about Play’s enforcement work than about almost anything else in Android, partly because it is making a case for the value of a curated store. These are company-reported figures with no independent audit.
10. Google blocked more than 1.75 million policy-violating apps in 2025.
(Source: Google)
Google says it “prevented over 1.75 million policy-violating apps from being published on Google Play” during 2025.
This counts submissions stopped at review, not apps removed after the fact, and a single developer submitting repeatedly can account for many. It is a measure of how much is thrown at the store rather than how much gets through.
11. Google banned more than 80,000 developer accounts.
(Source: Google)
Alongside the blocked submissions, Google “banned more than 80,000 bad developer accounts that attempted to publish harmful apps” in 2025.
Set that against the scale of the developer base and it is a small fraction, which is the point Google is making. It also means roughly one banned account for every 22 blocked submissions, suggesting most rejections come from accounts that are not malicious so much as non-compliant.
12. Play Protect scans more than 350 billion apps a day.
(Source: Google)
Google reports that Play Protect “now scans over 350 billion Android apps daily”.
Read this as scan events, not distinct apps. Play Protect checks the apps installed on each device repeatedly, so the figure multiplies a few million apps across three billion devices and many checks per day. It describes the scale of the scanning operation rather than the size of the app catalogue, which Google does not currently publish, and which is why the old “Google Play has three billion apps” line on this page has gone: it confused 3.04 million apps with three billion.
13. Google Play reaches more than 2 billion monthly active players.
(Source: Google, 2025)
Google tells developers that Play “connects developers with over 2 billion monthly active players worldwide”.
“Players” is doing specific work here: it means people who play games, not all Android users, and it is a figure aimed at game developers deciding where to publish. It is not a monthly active user count for Android or for the Play Store generally.
14. More than 600 million gamers use Play Games Services monthly.
(Source: Google, March 2026)
Google reported “more than 600 million gamers now using Play Games Services every month” in March 2026.
Play Games Services is the layer handling achievements, leaderboards, saved games and sign-in, so this counts players using games that integrate it rather than everyone who plays anything on Android. The gap between this and the 2 billion above is a difference of definition, not a contradiction.
Android Version Adoption
Android fragmentation is the platform’s oldest criticism. The figures below come from StatCounter’s web-usage data rather than from Google’s own device census, which it stopped publishing regularly.
15. Android 16 led version usage at 37.6% in September 2026.
(Source: StatCounter, September 2026)
Android 16 accounted for 37.6% of Android web usage in September 2026, well ahead of Android 15 at 15.9%.
That is a fast climb: the same series put Android 16 at roughly 25.8% a month earlier, so it gained around twelve points in four weeks. Monthly jumps of that size are normal during an update wave and are also a reason to treat any single month as a snapshot rather than a settled figure.
16. Six Android versions still hold meaningful usage share.
(Source: StatCounter, September 2026)
The rest of the September 2026 distribution: Android 15 at 15.9%, Android 14 at 12.07%, Android 13 at 11.6%, Android 12 at 7.64% and Android 11 at 6.35%.
So roughly half of Android web usage still comes from versions two or more releases behind, with Android 11, released in 2020, still ahead of some newer builds. That is the fragmentation problem in one line, and it is the practical constraint developers work around: targeting the newest APIs means leaving a substantial share of real devices behind. The old figures on this page had Android 9 as the most popular version, which gives a sense of how far the distribution has moved.
Wrap Up
Android in 2026 runs on more than 3 billion active devices, takes about 69% of mobile web usage, and is shipped by a long tail of manufacturers of whom even the largest, Samsung, accounts for under a quarter of global smartphone shipments. Android 16 has moved quickly to 37.6% of version usage, while roughly half of usage still sits on releases two or more generations old.
The thing to carry away is which number answers which question. Active devices are Google’s, and count hardware rather than people. Usage share is StatCounter’s, and counts page views rather than devices. Shipments are IDC’s, and count handsets by brand rather than by operating system. None of them is the count of Android users that most articles claim to report, because no such figure is published.
