Google cuts off Play Store support for Android Ice Cream Sandwich

Google announced today that it will no longer provide handsets running Android 4.x Ice Cream Sandwich with support and updates for the Google Play Store. That's because less than 1% of active Android devices are being driven by this version of the Android OS. In addition, Ice Cream Sandwich is already seven years old. The bottom line is that phones and tablets with Android 4.x installed will not receive the Google Play Services APK after version 14.7.99.

This means that users of Android devices running Ice Cream Sandwich will not be able to update apps they've installed from the Play Store. Essentially, this officially ends Google's support for the build of Android that was launched on October 19th, 2011. As an interesting bit of trivia, the first device to run Ice Cream Sandwich was the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

Google is telling developers that they should target API level 16 and higher. The company says that only a small number of Android devices are using API levels under 16, so developers targeting this level should be able to have their apps updated by most Android users.