Apple just announced WWDC 2015 today, when the company will presumably unveil iOS 9. Yet with iOS 9 on horizon, a significant number of iPhone and iPad users still haven’t bothered upgrading to iOS 8, with just 79% of all iOS users running it.
That number’s up just 1% in the last two weeks, which is the rate Apple updates its App Store Distribution Webpage, showing the rate at which users are adopting its latest operating system.
iOS 8 adoption has been slow as molasses compared to previous versions, and nothing seems to be changing. First released to the public on September 17, iOS 8 is almost seven months old at this point, and we can reasonably expect to start seeing the first developer’s only previews of iOS 9 in a couple months.
Comparatively, iOS 7 reached a 78% adoption rate just three months after release.
Granted, 79% of all devices is incredible compared to Google Android, where just 0.4% of all devices run the latest version of Android Lollipop.
And there are alternate reasons for why the adoption rate could be slowing down now. For example, iOS is running on more devices than ever before, and we’ve finally reached the point where, for many, a three or four year old iPhone or iPad that can only run iOS 7 is “good enough” without warranting an upgrade.
Still, the trend seems to be pretty clear. iOS 8 adoption rates will tick up at a rate of about 1% per month until iOS 9 hits, in which case, the whole cycle will start all over again.
Source: Apple
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
9 responses to “With iOS 9 around the corner, iOS 8 adoption stops dead in its tracks”
Don’t forget you can’t really compare with Android adoption: all but Nexus devices rely on manufacturers to develop new builds and many hold back on other than current devices…
But that’s the way Andoid is set up, so they shouldn’t get a free pass.
Of course you can compare the two. That’s in the very nature of Android. Saying you should ignore this because Android is different is nonsensical.
“…we’ve finally reached the point where, for many, a three or four year old iPhone or iPad that can only run iOS 7 is “good enough” without warranting an upgrade.”
Yup. My OG iPad works great for my 3 and 5 year-old boys on iOS 5. Same for my wife’s old iPod Touch.
I know lots of people who don’t have the free space on their phone to do the update. They don’t have the know-how to clear off the music and photos, and they can’t update unless they do. And they don’t really care enough to go to any trouble.
Still blows my mind that people don’t know they can plug their phone into itunes to update without dealing with the space issue. Not too long ago, there used to be a time that was the Only way to update
Hey, it’s post-PC era. You may think that iTunes is super popular, but the vast, vast majority of people don’t have it.
Tablets and iPhones are pretty powerful in what they can handle, but for any kind of real work or content creation they’re still no where near optimal. The post-PC era is coming, but it ain’t here yet.
Isn’t this more reflective of the maturing of the installed base? The wider and deeper the installed base becomes, the less adoption of new OSes. Older devices just don’t support the latest OSes, yet there are a lot of them still in use (i have 3 myself)