Apple's iOS 8 now on 56% of devices as adoption rate slowly picks up

Posted:
in iPhone edited November 2014
Adoption numbers for Apple's iOS 8 are leisurely plodding along, with the latest statistics showing 56 percent of users are now running the latest operating system nearly two months after launch.




According to Apple's developer webpage, iOS 8 was running on 56 percent of devices registered to the App Store as of Nov. 10, with iOS 7 share dropping to 40 percent. The numbers compare to a 52 percent share for iOS 8 calculated on Oct. 27.

Looking at readings taken from the preceding weeks, Apple's latest iOS appears to be back on track for growth after experiencing setbacks last month. Over the past two weeks, iOS 8 App Store presence grew four percent. Prior to that, the OS gained five points over a three-week period.

Following initially rapid uptake in line with previous iOS releases, iOS 8 adoption stagnated in early October, growing only one percent over a two-week period. At the time, it was thought that owners of legacy iPhone and iPad models were reluctant to upgrade after hearing reports of launch-day issues and subsequent bugs that disabled cellular connectivity and Touch ID on iPhone 6 and 6 Plus handsets.

Apple most recently released iOS 8.1, which activated Apple Pay for iPhone 6 owners and iCloud Photo Library. The company is currently working on an iOS 8.1.1 point update with bug fixes with various bug fixes and performance improvements.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 46
    I have updated my iPhone iOS to 8.1, but I've been using my iPad so much I haven't had a chance to dump a shit ton of software and books so I have enough room to update...

    ...my thinking is that is the prime reason many users haven't updated yet; the 8.1 is just to fat a hog to easily install.
  • Reply 2 of 46
    I have updated my iPhone iOS to 8.1, but I've been using my iPad so much I haven't had a chance to dump a shit ton of software and books so I have enough room to update...

    ...my thinking is that is the prime reason many users haven't updated yet; the 8.1 is just to fat a hog to easily install.

    It irritates me no end to see you people complain about a great new OS just because your dinko old devices don't have enough room for it. As if you expect Apple to pander to you slackers. NFWP. Get over it and upgrade or leave.
  • Reply 3 of 46

    I am sure most of this change is due ti the sales of new devices.  Math examples:

     

    500 MM iOS devices in us3

    52% are on iOS 8 on Oct 27 = 260 M devices.

    They sell 20 M new iOS 8 devices in the last 3 weeks.

    Now 280 M out of 520 M on iS 8 = 53.8 %

    To get to 56% about 11 M legacy devices had to upgrade.

    A fair number of those are schools with fleet upgrades.

     

    So I don't think the remaining base of consumers is upgrading very quickly.

     

    In my family we have 6 iOS devices.  5 are now upgraded and the last one will take a while.  They all required access to a Mac since they were too full to upgrade wirelessly.  Had the family not been out of town, there would be no way I could have accessed the lone Mac long enough for upgrades.  Each one took a couple of hours.

     

    Imagine all the users without a Mac and their legacy low storage capacities.

  • Reply 4 of 46
    danielsw wrote: »
    It irritates me no end to see you people complain about a great new OS just because your dinko old devices don't have enough room for it. As if you expect Apple to pander to you slackers. NFWP. Get over it and upgrade or leave.

    Looks like 44% of users choose "leave."
  • Reply 5 of 46
    danielsw wrote: »
    It irritates me no end to see you people complain about a great new OS just because your dinko old devices don't have enough room for it. As if you expect Apple to pander to you slackers. NFWP. Get over it and upgrade or leave.

    Well, that is beside the point I would say. If people (you, me, others) are "lazy" they are, regardless if that is good or not. The consequence is slow uptake. As for reasons why it is more work this time (from 7 to 8)... People are taking more and bigger photos / videos? More apps? I do not know. But Apple could know and help by doing automated backup and restore of some content during the upgrade.
  • Reply 6 of 46
    danielsw wrote: »
    I have updated my iPhone iOS to 8.1, but I've been using my iPad so much I haven't had a chance to dump a shit ton of software and books so I have enough room to update...

    ...my thinking is that is the prime reason many users haven't updated yet; the 8.1 is just too fat a hog to easily install.

    It irritates me no end to see you people complain about a great new OS just because your dinko old devices don't have enough room for it. As if you expect Apple to pander to you slackers. NFWP. Get over it and upgrade or leave.

    Well it's my own damn fault. WHen I bought my "dinko old" (and first) iPad almost a year ago I wondered if 16GB was gonna be enough, but I just had a hard time measuring how fast I might fill up that much space. It turns out I managed to fill it much faster then I expected and am planning on buying the 64GB size. Interestingly enough, my 2 year old iPhone 5 didn't fill up nearly as fast as the iPad and I installed nearly the same group of software and files. I have a hunch that the smaller screen size also means smaller apps and files.

    I can't understand how you think I'm asking Apple to pander to me. I like the new iOS as much as anything (got it on my iPhone) but it needs a lot of free memory on my iPad to install and it's a device I use so much I don't have the spare time to futtz with clearing house to have the space...I never said it was Apple fault.

    I've found that of my iPhone, iPad and iMac desktop; I use the iMac the least and next comes the iPad with the iPhone closely next. While the iMac is used the least, I use it for things that I can't do on the iDevices, so each serve me in their own unique ways seamlessly even though the Ipad's iOS is not the latest version.
  • Reply 7 of 46

    I've always wondered how this accurately represents actual usage.

     

    The statistics come from App Store usage. With more and more apps requiring newer OS versions to run, devices on older OS have fewer reasons to visit the App Store.

  • Reply 8 of 46
    arlorarlor Posts: 532member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DanielSW View Post





    It irritates me no end to see you people complain about a great new OS just because your dinko old devices don't have enough room for it. As if you expect Apple to pander to you slackers. NFWP. Get over it and upgrade or leave.

     

    Wow. Somebody's sensitive about adoption rates. 

     

    I'm not going to upgrade my herd of iPad 2s. Lots of anecdotal evidence suggests that iOS 8 is sluggish on the 2, I don't feel like sorting out my kids' media and apps to make space for it, and given what my kids use the things for they don't need it anyway. 

     

    Fragmentation of versions is probably going to grow over time: earlier versions of iOS had very high and very quick adoption because the relative share of recent devices in the market was very high. Now that we're getting to the point where extremely common (and recently sold) devices like the iPad 2 (still sold in some markets as recently as March) and the iPhone 4s (still sold in some markets as recently as September) are out there and active in huge numbers, but aren't really fast enough to run the newer versions of the OS well. 

     

    eta: The devices have also increasingly been adopted by corporate customers, who are notoriously cautious about upgrades they don't regard as necessary. Insofar as Apple's pursuing that market avidly, that typical caution is going to increase fragmentation, too.

  • Reply 9 of 46
    joshajosha Posts: 901member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by DanielSW View Post





    It irritates me no end to see you people complain about a great new OS just because your dinko old devices don't have enough room for it. As if you expect Apple to pander to you slackers. NFWP. Get over it and upgrade or leave.



    So me not using iOS8 on my iPhone4 which isn't supported on it, upsets you that badly !

    Get over it and accept that many Apple users don't need the very latest devices to be happy with them.

    Actually I feel sorry for those who feel they have to use the latest device to get their job done.

     

     Yes I'll eventually move on to a newer iPhone model, definitely when my so reliable iPhone4 has a problem.

      It will likely be a weak original battery which gets me to move on, but it would be nice if it continues serving me until mid Jan'15  when it would be 4 years old.

  • Reply 10 of 46
    saareksaarek Posts: 1,520member
    danielsw wrote: »
    It irritates me no end to see you people complain about a great new OS just because your dinko old devices don't have enough room for it. As if you expect Apple to pander to you slackers. NFWP. Get over it and upgrade or leave.
    Apple made a mistake by sticking with 16gb on the new generation. These devices are going to be around for at least 3 years adding to this issue.

    Considering what Apple makes on each device they did not have to be greedy by going 16/64/128 and should have gone 32/64/128.

    Yes, from a business point of view they're making more money as a large percentage will opt for the 64gb model this year. But in the long run it will leave many customers frustrated and this is not the experience you want customers to have.
  • Reply 11 of 46
    danielsw wrote: »
    It irritates me no end to see you people complain about a great new OS just because your dinko old devices don't have enough room for it. As if you expect Apple to pander to you slackers. NFWP. Get over it and upgrade or leave.

    I am not going to update 4S of my wife to iOS8, because we are not allowed to roll back to iOS7 in case of worse performances. Make it super-easy to roll back to iOS7 and people will give a try.
  • Reply 12 of 46
    jce10 wrote: »
    I've always wondered how this accurately represents actual usage.

    The statistics come from App Store usage.

    Yes... this chart shows the percentage of iOS versions actively visiting the App Store. It's for developers.

    It does not represent general usage. You'd have to find some other chart for that.

    jce10 wrote: »
    With more and more apps requiring newer OS versions to run, devices on older OS have fewer reasons to visit the App Store.

    It sounds like a chicken-n-egg situation.

    Old devices cannot run the newer apps and don't visit the App Store often... and thus newer apps don't support older devices.
  • Reply 13 of 46
    fallenjtfallenjt Posts: 4,053member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by saarek View Post





    Apple made a mistake by sticking with 16gb on the new generation. These devices are going to be around for at least 3 years adding to this issue.



    Considering what Apple makes on each device they did not have to be greedy by going 16/64/128 and should have gone 32/64/128.



    Yes, from a business point of view they're making more money as a large percentage will opt for the 64gb model this year. But in the long run it will leave many customers frustrated and this is not the experience you want customers to have.

    Mistake? I don't think so. I had over 90 apps in my phone and more than 3.5 GB of pictures. Guess what? I still had 3GB left in my 16GB iPhone 5S. If I use Optimize iPhone Storage for Photo and turn on iCloud Photo Library, I gain even more storage on the device (2GB+ more). 

    Moved to iPhone 6+ with 64GB and have full-size picture in the phone and over 100 apps + new MS Office, I only used 14GB total so far. I don't think most people even use 100 apps in their phone, so they would be fine with 16GB.

  • Reply 14 of 46
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    I have updated my iPhone iOS to 8.1, but I've been using my iPad so much I haven't had a chance to dump a shit ton of software and books so I have enough room to update...

    ...my thinking is that is the prime reason many users haven't updated yet; the 8.1 is just to fat a hog to easily install.

    I agree with your guess. BTW I found through trial and error, if you do a full back up to your Mac via iTunes, wipe the device, install fresh new iOS 8.1 and them start putting back stuff manually it can seemingly work magic. It is amazing how much you can put back. I had four iPads and five iPhones to update in the collection my wife and I have, most did it over the air but some were tricky. An iPhone 5 with the base config was problematic as there was no way it would do an over the air nor even and update tethered with iTunes due to being overly stuffed to the gills. The more drastic method I outlines actually got everything but a few apps back on board. The entire process probably took fifteen minutes.
  • Reply 15 of 46
    Arlor is correct regarding corporate users. I work for a fortune 500 company that warned us not to upgrade to iOS8 for 30 days. after that time period we were told that certain enterprise software was not guaranteed to work and therefore I have not upgraded yet. New purchase or upgrades of iPhone6/S+ were also put on hold. Knowing how I/T groups work I am pretty sure this is standard practice. we had the same policy in place for iOS7.
  • Reply 16 of 46
    Well it's my own damn fault. WHen I bought my "dinko old" (and first) iPad almost a year ago I wondered if 16GB was gonna be enough, but I just had a hard time measuring how fast I might fill up that much space. It turns out I managed to fill it much faster then I expected and am planning on buying the 64GB size. Interestingly enough, my 2 year old iPhone 5 didn't fill up nearly as fast as the iPad and I installed nearly the same group of software and files. I have a hunch that the smaller screen size also means smaller apps and files.

    I can't understand how you think I'm asking Apple to pander to me. I like the new iOS as much as anything (got it on my iPhone) but it needs a lot of free memory on my iPad to install and it's a device I use so much I don't have the spare time to futtz with clearing house to have the space...I never said it was Apple fault.

    I've found that of my iPhone, iPad and iMac desktop; I use the iMac the least and next comes the iPad with the iPhone closely next. While the iMac is used the least, I use it for things that I can't do on the iDevices, so each serve me in their own unique ways seamlessly even though the Ipad's iOS is not the latest version.

    Yep. That being said, you may want to hook that iPad up to iTunes, both to do the update and make sure you don't have the Other storage issue, where cached content is eating your storage. I bought a 16GB Air thinking that it was the largest capacity iOS device I'd ever owned, so it should have been enough. For the most part, it is, but I did have to delete a lot of apps to do the update on the device.
    arlor wrote: »
    Wow. Somebody's sensitive about adoption rates. 

    I'm not going to upgrade my herd of iPad 2s. Lots of anecdotal evidence suggests that iOS 8 is sluggish on the 2, I don't feel like sorting out my kids' media and apps to make space for it, and given what my kids use the things for they don't need it anyway. 

    Fragmentation of versions is probably going to grow over time: earlier versions of iOS had very high and very quick adoption because the relative share of recent devices in the market was very high. Now that we're getting to the point where extremely common (and recently sold) devices like the iPad 2 (still sold in some markets as recently as March) and the iPhone 4s (still sold in some markets as recently as September) are out there and active in huge numbers, but aren't really fast enough to run the newer versions of the OS well. 

    eta: The devices have also increasingly been adopted by corporate customers, who are notoriously cautious about upgrades they don't regard as necessary. Insofar as Apple's pursuing that market avidly, that typical caution is going to increase fragmentation, too.

    bradipao wrote: »
    I am not going to update 4S of my wife to iOS8, because we are not allowed to roll back to iOS7 in case of worse performances. Make it super-easy to roll back to iOS7 and people will give a try.

    Both of you should be fine with 8.1.1, it's going to improve speed on the older devices like 7.1 did for the iPhone 4.
    fallenjt wrote: »
    Mistake? I don't think so. I had over 90 apps in my phone and more than 3.5 GB of pictures. Guess what? I still had 3GB left in my 16GB iPhone 5S. If I use Optimize iPhone Storage for Photo and turn on iCloud Photo Library, I gain even more storage on the device (2GB+ more). 
    Moved to iPhone 6+ with 64GB and have full-size picture in the phone and over 100 apps + new MS Office, I only used 14GB total so far. I don't think most people even use 100 apps in their phone, so they would be fine with 16GB.

    I find movies to be a big reason for larger storage. But apps are also increasing in size, I have several that are 1-2.3GB in size, and I'm sure larger ones exist.

    That being said, because I don't have storage space, I actually have owned Hugo since it was given away in the 12 days of gifts promotion last year but have yet to watch it.
  • Reply 17 of 46

    Adoptiongate.

  • Reply 18 of 46
    ronmgronmg Posts: 163member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton View Post





    Looks like 44% of users choose "leave."



    Dream on, idiot.

  • Reply 19 of 46
    ronmgronmg Posts: 163member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Macky the Macky View Post





    Well it's my own damn fault. WHen I bought my "dinko old" (and first) iPad almost a year ago I wondered if 16GB was gonna be enough, but I just had a hard time measuring how fast I might fill up that much space. It turns out I managed to fill it much faster then I expected and am planning on buying the 64GB size. Interestingly enough, my 2 year old iPhone 5 didn't fill up nearly as fast as the iPad and I installed nearly the same group of software and files. I have a hunch that the smaller screen size also means smaller apps and files.



    I can't understand how you think I'm asking Apple to pander to me. I like the new iOS as much as anything (got it on my iPhone) but it needs a lot of free memory on my iPad to install and it's a device I use so much I don't have the spare time to futtz with clearing house to have the space...I never said it was Apple fault.



    I've found that of my iPhone, iPad and iMac desktop; I use the iMac the least and next comes the iPad with the iPhone closely next. While the iMac is used the least, I use it for things that I can't do on the iDevices, so each serve me in their own unique ways seamlessly even though the Ipad's iOS is not the latest version.

     

    The beauty of having your iMac with iTunes is that you can easily clear off your iPad 'temporarily' to enable iOS updating - simply sync to your iMac, ensuring that you have an encrypted backup stored locally in case something goes wrong, and also to easily restore from this backup in the future to a brand new 64GB iPad!! :-). Remember to document the password for the locally encrypted backup, since you rarely have to remember it it becomes easy to forget. Once you have synced to the iMac, I typically will go to Music and unclick the box that syncs to the iPhone. This will clear off all music from the iPad (remember that it is now synced to the iMac, so it is safe). For a lot of users, music takes multiple GB. When plugging the iPad into the iMac, iTunes should notice that iOS is outdated and offer to download the latest version - it is much more efficient to install the iOS update from the iMac vs. over the air - need less space on the device. So, download the new iOS version while you are backing up/syncing. Then, when you have cleared the music off the device, install iOS 8.1 while plugged into the iMac. Then, when done, click on the sync Music button and all music will be synced back to the device. This would also work with Apps - you can clear off iPad and then reinstall from iTunes once the iOS update is done. Another option is to open iPhoto, download all photos and videos off the iPad (do you REALLY need ALL those photos/videos?) to the iMac. There, you can more easily clean up the unwanted photos/videos, but it also clears room for iOS 8.1 install from the iMac.

     

    Something I have always done is to download all photos/videos to iPhoto, mark the ones I really like and want on my iOS device with 5 stars, and then from iTunes sync all 5 star photos to my iDevice - this will keep all the really good iPhotos you take synced to the iDevice while also allowing you to clear a lot of space. Really cool. Also, this way your spouse or kids may take really good shots that they also sync to iPhoto and if you mark theirs as 5 stars you will get all of theirs as well, so you are not limited to just the photos you take on that iDevice.

     

    I hope this helps, and enjoy iOS 8.1 on your iPad!!

  • Reply 20 of 46
    Apple need to make it MUCH clearer that if you plug the iOS device into a computer and upgrade through iTunes there is no need to free up 5Gb of space. It's the prime reason I see people not upgrading and there is nothing to indicate this is a valid solution.
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