Gathering the old data from archive.org snapshots was a pain, I'm glad I saved someone else the trouble :)
One thing that's missing from this data is the actual number of devices in circulation, as said in the article it's only the market share among Android devices, and only those which access the Play Store. Having access to that data would make the graphs much more interesting, but unfortunately I have no idea where to get it.
I'll bet this means an enormous number of outdated devices outside the first world are missing. In particular, any area without cheap and reliable data access is probably eschewing the Play Store for some kind of local-area app sharing like Zapya.
Not your fault obviously, these are fascinating stats as is. But I'm also really curious how many smartphones have gone "off the grid" without being retired. Generalizing from Myanmar [1], I suppose Facebook's internal device data would be the best source.
Gathering the old data from archive.org snapshots was a pain, I'm glad I saved someone else the trouble :)
One thing that's missing from this data is the actual number of devices in circulation, as said in the article it's only the market share among Android devices, and only those which access the Play Store. Having access to that data would make the graphs much more interesting, but unfortunately I have no idea where to get it.