Complaints of fragmentation in Apple’s mobile ecosystem were most prominent in early- and mid-2010, and iOS 3.0′s adoption rate shows us why. Since then, however, the adoption rate of Apple’s major new OS builds has been remarkable.
“iOS 5 captured approximately 75% of all iOS users in the same amount of time it took Gingerbread to get 4% of all Android users,” Sauve wrote in his analysis on pxldot. “Even more astounding is that 15 weeks after launch iOS 4 was at 70% and iOS 5 was at 60% while Ice Cream Sandwich got to just 1% share at the same age. If there were any question as to whether iOS had a less fragmented ecosystem than Android, the past two charts provide a fairly definitive answer.”
Sauve continued, “iOS devices have, on average, reached 10% version share 300 times faster than Android versions, 30% share 19 times faster, and 50% share 7 times faster.”
The adoption rate of future major iOS builds will likely be even more impressive thanks to the introduction of an over-the-air update mechanism Apple added in iOS 5. With iCloud backing up data, on-device notifications when updates become available, and the requirement of connecting to a PC to update no longer a factor, the major barriers standing between mass-market users and software updates have been eliminated.
This ensures that users have access to the most current iOS features as quickly as possible, and it also means developers don’t need to worry about old iOS versions as much while they shift focus to new builds.