Is it just a miscalculation? Hold-on...nope, it's definite - Android OS "Gingerbread" 2.3 features in less than 1% of the total Android smartphone users worldwide!

But, why is this so...?

Gingerbread has some great features. It has an improved on-screen keypad, which is much faster and facilitates intuitive typing. Moreover, Gingerbread allows you to kill misbehaving apps, gives you a greater insight into what's running in the background, and also gives you the option to view and control all the app downloads from your browser.

But, in spite of all these amazing features, there aren't many Android users who have this version of the OS running in their phones. Is it because Android market is mimicking the wildly varied PC market before it? Maybe...may not be! But, something which can be generally agreed upon is as follows:

Since there's heavy fragmentation in the Android market and wireless device manufacturers also add their customization features to Android phones, users have to wait till device manufacturers release their reworked versions of this new OS.

Mobile strategists and market researchers believe that this is the prime reason behind the low user base of Gingerbread. Though, there are ways to unofficially update your Android smartphone with a newer OS version, but sadly not many people know about them.

Let's have a look at the stats for Android OS usage across the different versions:

• Android OS 1.5 - 3.9%

• Android OS 1.6 - 6.3%

• Android OS 2.1 - 31.4%

• Android OS 2.2 - 57.6%

• Android OS 2.3 - 0.8%

There you go...these are recent figures! But, not to worry...as the days pass, these figures are sure to improve as smartphone manufacturers release their own versions of Gingerbread!