This page shows the split of different Android system versions out in the field.

At the time of writing this post the split was this:

Data collected during a 7-day period ending on September 7, 2015.
Any versions with less than 0.1% distribution are not shown.

What this tells us is that approximately 95% of devices run Android version 4.0.3 or greater. This is a significant statistic when considering what platforms we want to support. @DiamondLawrence has a phone running 2.3 and while I run 4.4, I do have an older device running 2.3 as well. This doesn't mean it is necessarily a good idea to target 2.3 though. Perhaps those phones are minorities in the larger scheme of things. This is important to think about for commercial viability and whether we should bother supporting 2.3.

For games, knowing the minimum Open GL support is very important. We have been using OpenGL ES 1.1 so our Android 2.3 devices can happily render. However doing this means we miss out on new features, including, though not new, shader support. Shader support requires Open GL ES 2.0.

But can't we just support multiple versions? We can, but the minimum support version helps determine how much work we need to put in. For example, if we plan to scrap Open GL ES 1.1 support then we don't need to bother with testing and fixing issues related to Open GL ES 1.1 (fixed pipeline on mobile devices) which could free up some time to work on improving newer features.

I'm interested in hearing any thoughts on the topic of minimum version support.