What happens to android-users if I release a new version with higher requirements?

Question

I'm currently involved in an open source project which I regulary release in the Google PlayStore. As the statistics of android-usages show that less than 10% of my users use android 3 or lower I started to wonder if I should switch to Android 4.X. This gives me some more functionality which I can't include at the moment (SettingsFragment for example, which isn't even inside of the support library).

When I release a newer version with higher requirements in the PlayStore - what will happen to my users which don't fulfill this requirements? What about users who want to install my app with low android-versions? Is my app hidden for them as soon as I upgrade the app? Is there any chance that my current version of my app can still be found by lower devices and the newer version is available for newer devices? I would like to avoid having two seperate apps in the playstore as I would lose a few people.

I couldn't find anything in the Google-Docs so I needed to ask for help in this glory community ;)

Answer 1

You can target multiple different APIs using multiple APK's. Just use your current version for old versions and create a new APK for everyone else. More here: http://developer.android.com/google/play/publishing/multiple-apks.html

Hope this helps, let me know if you need more info.