What Android SDK should I use now?

Question

I'm planning on trying to make a game to put on the Android Play Store soon, and I was wondering what SDK should I use now? I know there's 4.1 out for Jellybean, but should I still go for an older one like 2.2 or 2.3?

Answer 1

There are statistics on what devices are wide spread over the users of the Google Play market to be found here: Android Dashboard

At the time of this writing (September 2014), it looks like this:

Seeing the statistics, I would go for Jelly Bean (Android 4.1 +).

Answer 2

You should still at least target API level 10 which currently has about 60% share: http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html

You can use the support library (v4) to get new classes like fragments.

Answer 3

So use the dashboard like everyone says to go down to 2.1-2.2 but don't forget that should be your min SDK. Your target sdk number should be 16 (as noted the #io2012). This will make sure that your styles get rendered nicely for the new stuff.