Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is slowly gaining shares in the market. However, Android 2.3 Gingerbread is still dominating Google's mobile world.

Data collected on devices accessing the Play Store in the last two weeks of October, reveals that Android 4.0 is active on 25.8 percent of Android devices, which means one in four Android devices now runs Ice Cream Sandwich.

The rise in Android 4.0 shares will no doubt please Google. Most of the Android smartphones are now shipping with version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, opposed to only a handful of devices releasing with older versions of Android. However, there are also some devices like Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and Google's Nexus 7 tablet that come with Jelly Bean OS right out of the box and are in hands of millions of consumers worldwide. Jelly Bean usage shares jumped to 2.7 percent - up by 0.9 percent as compared to October, according to stats released by Google.

However, more than half - about 54.2 percent - of Android devices are running Gingerbread operating system. The tablet-centric Honeycomb OS is only on 1.8 percent of devices, Froyo on 12 percent, Éclair on 3.1 percent, Donut on 0.3 percent, and Cupcake is running on 0.1 percent of Android devices.

According to research firm IDC, Android is the world's largest mobile ecosystem, grabbing 75 percent of market shares in Q3 of 2012. Apple is only left with less than 15 percent of market to play with, even as BlackBerry and Microsoft are over-the-horizon with only 4.3 percent and 2 percent of market shares respectively.

Earlier this week, Google also announced that its Play Store now has 700,000 applications, roughly as many application as in Apple's iTunes App Store.

Ever since Google released its mobile operating system in 2008, Android has been gaining in market share every quarter. The combination of smartphone vendors and consumers has helped push the number higher. On the other hand, the reason why iOS market share is lagging could be because Apple is the sole vendor of iOS devices.

In the mobile market - controlled by Apple (iOS) and Google (Android), RIM (BlackBerry) and Microsoft (Windows) - and even Nokia (Windows) - are losing ground. Microsoft recently launched its Windows Phone 8 operating system, which is a significant improvement over WP7, and BlackBerry is coming up with its new BB 10 operating system in Q1 of 2013. However, the fate of competitors looks uncertain. Do you think that Microsoft or Blackberry can put halt the growth of Android? Do not forget to shares your views below.