As is its wont at this time of the month, Google has updated its Android platform distribution chart, and while there aren't any real shockers to be found, it's still nice to see which versions of Android are most popular.

Let's start from the top of the table: as should be expected, the number of devices running Android 1.5 (Cupcake) and 1.6 (Donut) is steadily dropping, as more and more users upgrade their devices or receive software updates. 2.1 (Éclair) is continuing to loose headway, with 17.5% of Android users running it.

Moving on to more modern versions of the OS, Froyo (Android 2.2) is still the king of the hill where stats are concerned, claiming 59.4% of users. It's important to note, however, that its numbers, too, are dropping (just last month, it accounted for 64.6% of Android devices). That's because of the Gingerbread updates that many manufacturers have begun pushing out - and it shows in Gingerbread's latest statistics. When all four versions of 2.3 are taken into account (2.3, 2.3.2, 2.3.3, and the most recent 2.3.4, which added support for video chat), the OS version is now installed on 18.6% of Android phones - a figure that's more than double what it was in June.

Sadly, Honeycomb isn't seeing quite the same growth rate - even when both of its versions (3.0 and 3.1) are combined, the tablet OS runs on just under 1% of all Android devices. Combined with the fact that that's only a 0.3% increase over last month, it doesn't exactly inspire confidence - and as we've seen lately, that's clear not only to us, but also to developers.

I suppose that's to be expected in an iPad-dominated market, though. And it wouldn't be entirely accurate to say that all is lost, especially with Ice Cream Sandwich just around the corner and those oh-so-sexy quad-core tablets on the horizon.

But I digress. Tablets aside, these newest stats are definitely good news for Android - it seems that manufacturers are finally smartening up and getting on the update ball.

Source: Google