Almost three quarters of iOS users have upgraded to the newest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, according to the latest stats shared by the company.
As measured by visits to the App Store on February 2, Apple claims that 72 percent of active iOS devices are running iOS 8 — compared to 25 percent who are sticking with iOS 7, and a minuscule 3 percent using earlier iterations. It’s not quite at the 80 percent+ mark that iOS 7 was at this time last year, but next to Android’s pitiful numbers, it’s still got to be considered a runaway hit for Apple.
Read on to find out what’s driving the move.
While iOS 8 is available on all newer iPhones and iPads, the most likely explanation for the continuing switchover to iOS 8 is the increasing pool of iPhone 6 and 6 Plus owners, which iOS 8 comes pre-installed on.
Apple sold a massive 74.5 million iPhones during the last three months of 2014, and according to a report published earlier today, the company plans to ship another 50 million by the end of March. I’d be very surprised if iOS 8 hit anywhere north of 80 percent adoption overall, but it’s still enough to trounce mobile OS adoption on any other platform.
By comparison, the latest version of Android (a.k.a Lollipop) is installed on a dismal 1.6 percent of devices. In fact, one of the most popular mobile OS’s used by the Android set remains Jelly Bean, which first arrived in 2012 and was last updated in 2013.
As kindly types, we don’t like to throw around terms like “fragmentation nightmare,” but it sure does put Apple’s numbers in context.
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
9 responses to “Android would kill for a tenth of iOS 8’s adoption”
Considering Apple sold a whopping 74.6 million iPhones in the 3 months from November you’d think IOS 8 adoption rate would have reached nearly 80% by now. But compared to Android’s paltry 1.6% adoption rate for Android 5.0 Lollypop IOS 8 is most definitely a success.. Androids poor adoption rates is due in part to Google’s Nexus phones getting priority for updates which Google releases the source code to its OEMs which they test etc etc. such a long process which Apple doesn’t have to worry about since it makes both the hardware and software. Plus Apple doesn’t let an obstacle like carriers get in their way when pushing software updates from their servers.
Of course they are.
iOS 8 runs on anything past the 4S in phones, and even the iPad 2 (although you won’t be able to maximize your results on such old hardware). Considering the three YEAR gap between 4S and iOS 8’s launch date, most people have got a new device between then anyway.
Unless you’re nuts about software updates like me (“WHEN IS THE LAUNCH DATE?! WHEN IS THE LAUNCH HOUR!?!?”) you’re not going to check if your Android phone can run the latest OS because they make it a pain to upgrade – you’ll run with what you’ve got, right out of the box (or you’ve already rooted and customized it using another mod). You don’t know if your phone can handle it – and some carriers just straight-up never get the updates pushed to their phones.
I have no first hand experience with the Android world. I respect it but here is my comment. If you are developing SW for Android and you wanted to use the coolest features in your code but the installed base won’t have that new OS version then you won’t get your new software out there except to the 1.2% of devices upgraded. That would not sit too well with me unless I shunned the new release of OS and kept developing to the old OS version. As a wanna be iOS developer it is a full time job keeping up with the latest os, such as ios 8. I am no where near caught up with all the new stuff there. But , I can have some satisfaction of knowing my hard work will have a potential customer base using the newest/coolest os that i can write to. The irony is I write Java for my day job and I can easily probably work in the Android development world but at this moment I’ll stick with IOS. It is hard enough.
Fellow developer here. My day job consists of writing C# on Windows (shriek), however I couldn’t be bothered with Windows Phone either. I’m grateful for Swift, which is really easy to use, but the steepest learning curve for me has been the UI with storyboards and auto layout. Xcode 6.1 has made it a lot better though. I suggest you check out the Stanford University lectures on iTunes U, which explains everything really well.
I guess if you’re not working with something day in and day out it’s a bit more difficult to pick up. Best of luck.
Well,
Since iOS7 and iOS8 are a poor subset of Android, Apple can’t claim victory. The day they will come back to their senses and bring iOS back to the iPhone, they could compare the results…
Hahahahahahahahahaha!
Hahahaha lmfao.. Look at Androin before iOS came ou, it was a carbon copy on blackberry. The moment Android team saw iOS they took a shit on themselves and copied the fuck out of Apple. #stayreal Everything on android they stole from Apple or the Jailbreake community.
Hahahahah, you’re living in a demented reality buddy.
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