iOS 6 Adoption Up 29% After Google Maps Hits App Store

Don’t know if it’s true, but I can believe it—I don’t rely on transit daily, but if I did, Google’s web version was “just OK.” I’m sure a lot of people wanted a real transit app before going to iOS 6. Add in those people swayed by the media overhype.

Notice that Apple’s iOS 6 Maps app ALREADY links directly to the Google Maps app for transit. You’d almost think Apple wants the best experience for users, and that they’re not the lone bad guy in all this...

Just hit the L-shaped route button (not the car button) when viewing a location, and you get the same 3 choices of routing as always: car, walking, and transit. Of course, transit is no longer internal, so it suggests external apps to you. If you have Google Maps installed, it will be displayed with a big “Route” button. Tap it, and Apple’s Maps app passes the request seamlessly off to Google’s Maps app (or whatever transit app you prefer). Very nice.

Plus, this works around a key limit of Google’s maps: they want you giving your contacts to THEM, and they do not seem to use your iPhone’s own contacts as destinations. Want to get to a friend’s house (one in your device's contacts) by bus? Google’s app won’t do it—but find your friend in Apple’s Maps app and it will pass the destination off to Google. Problem solved.

ChazUK said:

No it doesn't.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/20/googles-andy-rubin-defines-android-activation-trumpets-700-0/



For a spewing hater, you are very uneducated in the matter.

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Not exactly. If you listen to the 'activation' numbers (total, and sustained average rate) quoted by Google, they don't match one another. Often times, even if you cite the *slower* rate of increase touted by Google from the prior period, and extrapolate from that date to the current 'activation' numbers, you end up with a number *larger* than the *new* total activation number.

An example, using arbitrary numbers to clarify what I described above:
Day N: 1,000,000 activations @ 10,000/day
Day N+100: 1,800,000 activations @ 15,000/day

(It would be 2,000,000 activations if it increased at 10,000/day
or 2,500,000 activations if it increased at 15,000/day.)

Since the two numbers don't usually mesh (often by a significant margin), and we don't actually know what *does* constitute an 'activation', I'd say you're going a bit overboard calling him a "spewing hater". He may have been wrong about a wipe and reinstall counting as an activation, but that doesn't explain the discrepancy we often see between the old numbers & the new numbers.

Looks like incomplete data reading, to be soft:

1- Would like to have a look at the "before" google maps increase rate.
2- Would like to have a look at the number of new ios devices sold.

I'm using Google maps over Apple's and sure that some users may have waited before upgrading, but i highly doubt the mainstream consumer did.

Looks to me as like they are analyzing the numbers after making an hypothesis and making them square it, instead of the other way around.

Don't forget about Apple sales in China last weekend.

nepalisherpa said:

Could it be that more people are buying iPhone 5/new iPads (which come with iOS 6 to begin with) for holiday gifts?

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I agree with the holiday purchases thought. I also agree with the Google Maps effect and also think China coming online with new Apple products last weekend added to this increase. If Apple sold more than 2 million iPhone 5's last weekend I wonder how many iPhone 4S and iPhone 4's they sold in China. It would not surprise me if more than 4 million Apple devices utilizing iOS 6 were sold in China alone this last weekend. If so, China alone added roughly 4% to the 17% iOS 6 user gain noted in the article.

ChazUK said:

No it doesn't.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/20/googles-andy-rubin-defines-android-activation-trumpets-700-0/

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There was some information that each new device & user ID combination counted as an activation. In other words, if you bought a second hand device, it would still count as a new activation when you activate for your account. I don't know if Google closed that loophole later. I doubt it would make a big difference in the grand scheme though.

Not a fan of the new Google Maps app. Find it sluggish and very slow compared to Apple Maps. Maybe in a few updates time it will be better, but as of now, I find it pretty unusable.

nepalisherpa said:

Could it be that more people are buying iPhone 5/new iPads (which come with iOS 6 to begin with) for holiday gifts?

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If the new devices in one week add up to such a large portion of the existing installed base, Apple will have a blockbuster quarter.

so why is this front page news when both "analysis" contradict so much w/ each other? Nothing can be taken from this post nothing.

Hooray for misleading statistics!

Most people glancing over this are taking it as 29% more of the group of all iOS users adopting.

What it actually means is that 29% more adopted since the start date. The difference is that we don't have any information to discern what that actually means. The number of users adopting since a certain date is always growing, no matter what. If they released the same statistic from the week before we would have something to compare to, but still we should be comparing the actual rate of adoption, not the percentage of new users.

For all we know if we move the graph to the week before it could be 50% "Up."

slffl said:

people didn't upgrade because of what other trolls and link bait bloggers said about Apple Maps, not because they actually used it. Sad.

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I upgraded my now out-of-service 3GS to iOS 6 to try out the new Maps and it was horrible. Couldn't find most of the POIs I entered and only accepts perfectly-formed addresses. Not to mention lack of transit directions (and no third-party plugin worked well at all). So I held off on updating my current iPhone until after Google Maps was released.

Now I enter "Hotel Lafayette" in Apple's Maps and it takes me to some random hotel in Lafayette, Indiana, while Google takes me to the Lafayette Hotel, my intended destination. So I'm sticking with Google.

AAPL addict said:

I agree with the holiday purchases thought. I also agree with the Google Maps effect and also think China coming online with new Apple products last weekend added to this increase. If Apple sold more than 2 million iPhone 5's last weekend I wonder how many iPhone 4S and iPhone 4's they sold in China. It would not surprise me if more than 4 million Apple devices utilizing iOS 6 were sold in China alone this last weekend. If so, China alone added roughly 4% to the 17% iOS 6 user gain noted in the article.

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Prior versions usually do not sell at the same rate as Apple's new model. iPhone 5 may change this trend, as LTE is not available in many countries, making 4S seem like a reasonable trade-off. Still, I doubt 4 mil iOS6 devices could have been sold in China in 3 days if iPhone 5 sales are at 2mil.

LagunaSol said:

4) Google Maps as a last resort, or if I need transit directions. (The constant badgering to log in is annoying. Hmm, I wonder why Google wants to associate where I drive with my Gmail account?)

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What? It hasn't asked me to log in after I initially fired it up.

Oh wait. It's you. IT'S CUZ THEY'RE OUT TO GET YOU! Tell me this, people. Why does Google Maps want my location data? Why does Google's GPS service need to know where I am? It's so they can SELL MY INFORMATION!

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bbfc said:

Not a fan of the new Google Maps app. Find it sluggish and very slow compared to Apple Maps. Maybe in a few updates time it will be better, but as of now, I find it pretty unusable.

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I wouldn't say unusable, but it is pretty slow and chunkity. One good thing I can say about Apple Maps is that the UI is easier to follow, and it's really quick.

Wait until Christmas day, when everyone opens their brand-new iOS 6 devices. Google Maps is really going to drive up iOS 6 numbers then!

theBB said:

There was some information that each new device & user ID combination counted as an activation. In other words, if you bought a second hand device, it would still count as a new activation when you activate for your account. I don't know if Google closed that loophole later. I doubt it would make a big difference in the grand scheme though.

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This is the first I've ever heard if this myself. There was lots of speculation and debate over what constituted an activation but it wasn't until Andy Rubin explained what they counted as an activation.

Traditionally we've had people refuting the numbers because of cheap Chinese handsets (which would never be counted without Android Market or Google Play pure installed on the devices.

Going beyond only Google's numbers, its likely there are more devices not connecting to Google services (like the Kindle fire for instance) which are not counted but those devices pose very littler value to Google.

I'd be interested in residing those articles or posts that explain about the same devices being counted as an activation multiple times if you can remember where you heard it (not doubting you at all, just genuinely curious if Google gave been manipulating the figures in the past). Its always interesting to read more in to potential shenanigans by these big corps to try to make themselves look like they're doing better than they actually are.

jclardy said:

Hooray for misleading statistics!

Most people glancing over this are taking it as 29% more of the group of all iOS users adopting.

What it actually means is that 29% more adopted since the start date. The difference is that we don't have any information to discern what that actually means. The number of users adopting since a certain date is always growing, no matter what. If they released the same statistic from the week before we would have something to compare to, but still we should be comparing the actual rate of adoption, not the percentage of new users.

For all we know if we move the graph to the week before it could be 50% "Up."

Click to expand...

Yeah, it's super vague about what "growth" means in this context, and how their >100% y-axis even relates to that (surely the user base did not grow by 100+% overnight every day).

But even on top of that, if you take "100%" to be all of their unique hits on Tuesday...the news is that there were "29%" more people using their devices on the weekend? Is that news?

Even under the large assumption that the conclusion in the headline is actually what's represented by the data, it does make for an interesting datapoint for 'how many people can be influenced to discount something sight-unseen just because the internet is a negative place', but not much else. I obviously can't speak internationally, but I've been loving Apple Maps since it launched. Even if you ignore the superior feature set and interface, at least in my area it's more accurate than Google. So this whole thing has been really amusing in that puzzling kind of way.

Downloaded - have yet to use

I downloaded because I was notified about it on the rumor sites and figured I'd get it before I have to use it.

Except I haven't yet opened the App. I've since used iOS Maps quite a few times - mostly through Siri - "take me back home" or "directions to nearest cambodian restaurant", etc.

iOS Maps works fine for me, and the OS integration. I'm sure I'll check out GMaps at some point, but I'm part of the "downloaded" stat but I haven't used it.

theBB said:

If the new devices in one week add up to such a large portion of the existing installed base, Apple will have a blockbuster quarter.

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The survey does not specify that the numbers are US-only! While I agree that sales alone couldn't jump that high, I also disagree that Google Maps is the only cause here.

Dr McKay said:

Yea that sucks, out of genuine curiosity what 4.0+ API's could you make use of if you decided to make an app that only supported that version and above?

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4.0 mostly contains convenient utility methods.
3.0 added open accessory which makes it pretty easy to communicate between custom USB devices and Android apps (we have an in house app we wrote that allows Android tablets to plug into machinery and control it... We're trying to get the app ported to iOS but I'm not certain it's going to be possible.)

Certainly not enough to verify any hypothesis (someone clearly didn't take a research methods class in college!), but I for one held off on upgrading until the app came out. As soon as I downloaded it, I tested it out on my morning commute, and then upgraded to iOS 6 immediately.

As soon as the upgrade was done, I replaced the default Maps icon on my first home screen with Google Maps and moved Apple Maps to my "Useless ****" folder on my last page

gmanist1000 said:

Google needs to add:

• Contacts integration!
• Night mode

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It needs more stuff...

Starred items don't show the name you've given them in the bookmarks, instead they are displayed as coordinates.

Cannot add an address to a contact. Cannot drop a pin and assign the address to a contact.

Cannot give a starred place a custom name.

No Compass lock, sometimes when pinching the map gets tilted by accident. I'd like an option to lock the compass.

Multiple pins drop - I'd like to be able to drop multiple pins on the map and route between them.

Route from - cannot do anything else but write in an address. I'd like to route my contact's address for example or pick a map point to route from.

Route drag, an ability to drag the navigational route, like it's possible on the desktop Google Maps website would be nice.

I updated to iOS6 the day after Google Maps was released...

Still not upgrading until I know this wifi **** is corrected. And no, I'm not talking about the bug that was just fixed on minis and iphone5s, I'm talking about the one that does a WHSPR check to apple.com/success.html and kills my connection every time I'm behind a corporate LAN and Websense returns a different page.

OriginalMacRat said:

That's a LOT of savings when signing up for a 2yr minimum $1,920 contract!!

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You are planning to have service right. I never understood this argument. If you don't plan to have a data plan why buy a smart phone?

At the iPad mini event Tim Cook said after one month there were 200 million iOS devices running iOS 6. Does anyone know what % of total users available to upgrade that would be?

Are the dates by the way matching the 2-millions iphone5 china weekend?