Android 4.4 announced with a chocolatey name: KitKat

Whether it’s a neat marketing stunt or just Google going mad, the maker of Android has announced that its next version of the mobile operating system will have a chocolate-inspired name, moving on from “Jelly Bean” to Nestle’s KitKat.

Little is known about what Google plans to make available to smartphones and tablets in the next version of Android, though Google’s Sundar Pichai did say that upon his return from an overseas trip, he was “thrilled to find this guy waiting to greet me on the front lawn”, referring to a new Android statue waiting in the Google Garden.

Sundar Pichai's picture of the Android KitKat statue in Google's garden.

Previously, Google would install an Android themed statue in its garden when it was ready to start talking about the next version of Android, and that looks like it might just be around the corner.

IFA is also around the corner, Germany’s answer to the Consumer Electronics Show, and with Samsung set to announce products tomorrow, as well as more from Sony and LG also expected, we might be seeing the first Android KitKat-based devices very, very shortly.