It's true, Gingerbread devices are still very common (I have a rooted Kindle Fire that's still running GB, and there's nothing I can do to change that). However, something to note is that there are new Gingerbread phones being sold in the US right now. A friend of mine just bought one. He's a student without a lot of money, and it was inexpensive and didn't require a long term contract. He doesn't have data on this phone, or even text messages. He has voice only, and does everything else over wifi.
They're still out there, absolutely.
Also, writing code to work well on lower end phones might be a pain, but it means it's going to make your app even smoother on the higher end devices. It requires more time, buy you get more of a performance buffer.
...but I understand that only techies dare to go download random images from the interwebz and attempt flashing their device. Personally, my Kindle Fire is running this SimpleCM9 Android 4.0.4 quite well.
Well I'll be. I guess I hadn't taken a look at what's being done to modify the Kindle Fire in a while, I shouldn't have doubted someone would build a newer ROM for it :)
They're still out there, absolutely.
Also, writing code to work well on lower end phones might be a pain, but it means it's going to make your app even smoother on the higher end devices. It requires more time, buy you get more of a performance buffer.