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Comment by quandrum | Hacker News Reader

It's the first phone with a major new release of the best-selling mobile operating system.

While the phone itself won't sell as many copies as the 4S, Ice Cream Sandwich will have a larger install base than iOS5. There's a lot of people interested in what's in it.

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Ice Cream Sandwich will have a larger install base than iOS5

Maybe but when? Honeycomb only has about 2% of the total Android market share 85% are still on Froyo or Gingerbread. What makes you think Ice Cream Sandwich is going to get better penetration?

Ice Cream Sandwich isn't going to have a larger install base then iOS5 anytime soon.

Honeycomb is a tablet-only OS, so that market share isn't really relevant when talking about Ice Cream Sandwich. The Gingerbread market share would be a better indicator.

And iOS 4 was certainly bigger then gingerbread.

iOS as a whole is also still a tad bigger then Android although that shouldn't last long.

That said I have no problem with the assertion that ICS may eventually outinstall iOS 5.

HC's low adoption means nothing in this context as it's only targeted at tablets. However, it's important to point out that 45% of the market is still on Froyo. Google's taking a more heavy-handed stance on updates for new devices, so things should not be as dire on ICS as they have been with past releases. If I had to guess, I'd say 90% of current Honeycomb tablets (thanks to Google's iron-fist control of the source) and maybe 75% of current Gingerbread devices will get the bump to ICS within 6 months.

I wish they would stop with the not so cutsy dessert names. It really makes it confusing to keep track of what's what.

They also use numbers. Android 4.0 .

They're all in alphabetical order. Donut, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich. I assume there were internal releases named Apple and Brownie or something similar.

... Donut, ???, Froyo...

Was there an Eclair or something in there someplace?

Apple Pie

Bubblegum

Cupcake (1.5)

Donut

Eclair

Froyo (Frozen Yogurt)

Gingerbread (2.3)

Honeycomb

Ice Cream Sandwich

Jelly Bean (rumored)

> Apple Pie > Bubblegum

Why haven't these codenames been revealed earlier? I have searched high and low for Android's A and B codenames, but never found a reliable source. Thanks for solving the mystery! :)

Is a random HN comment a reliable source?

Android version numbers are not search-engine friendly because minor releases are pretty major, and searching for "Android 4" will actually yield results for "Android 2.3.4".

I like full code names for releases as it eliminates confusion.

Sounds like a search engine problem, not an operator error.

Google's SERP for Android 4 returns hits about Ice Cream Sandwich as expected... Also, it just launched today, a general lack of cotent may be what you're running up against.

The next one is Jelly Bean

Maybe they should use big cat names?

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