Android 2.1 on nearly 60% of Android phones now, 2.2 creeping up

Both Android 2.1 and 2.2 are creeping up the Android fragmentation charts, with 2.1 now on 59.7% of Android phones and 2.2 is now installed on 4.5% of Android handsets.

1.5 and 1.6 still account for 35.6% of all Android devices, and will most likely continue to hold a significant chunk of the market until users upgrade their phones to newer models. Moving forward, however, we’ve recently argued that if Android continues to be this fragmented, users won’t stick around.

Regardless, 2.1 has been steadily rising over the last two months, accounting for 45.1% in early June to it’s current penetration of 59.7%. It will be interesting to see if the growth of 2.1 slows down in the near future as handset begin switching to 2.2 – eventually, of course, 2.2 should start to reverse the growth of 2.1, but by then, we might even see Android 3.0…