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iOS adoption rate lowest in years

X

X-X

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 22, 2014
401
9
With horribly buggy release after horrible buggy release, Apple is slowly fragmenting their platform.

ios8_usage.png



I think:

They should just prolong their release cycle to 2 years, because currently (if you update every time Apple wants you to) you have a fully working OS only 4 months a year.

I think they are completely destroying user trust and once gone it's almost impossible to get it back - that's what happened to Microsoft.

What do you think?

Really stable great new iOS every 2 years or buggy unfinished mess every year?
 
I think it's just more of that fact that the OTA required 5.4GB for some reason and most people don't have that space available.
 
And it will not help them to sell a 16GB iPhone 6 - that's really a shame.
 
chrf097 said:
I think it's just more of that fact that the OTA required 5.4GB for some reason and most people don't have that space available.
Click to expand...

To add on, some users are oblivious you can update via iTunes and back up your phone too...I just facepalm when people make a group on Facebook asking for people's phone numbers...
 
chrf097 said:
I think it's just more of that fact that the OTA required 5.4GB for some reason and most people don't have that space available.
Click to expand...
It very well could be. The only reason my wife is running iOS 8 is because I updated her via iTunes. She initially told me she didn't have enough room to upgrade. I'm sure a lot of people think the same and aren't sure what to get rid of to do so OTA.
 
chrf097 said:
I think it's just more of that fact that the OTA required 5.4GB for some reason and most people don't have that space available.
Click to expand...

I think that's half of it. I think the other half is that a lot of people are wary after the 6--->7 transition shock many went through last year. Then on top of it all 7.1.2 is SOLID and it was hard to decide to give that up. I think maybe OP has a good point: we really only had a super solid stable OS for 4 months. A shame to start over with all the bugginess again so soon!!There ought to be a better way.
 
The main issue was probably related to download issues a lot of people experienced.

Not to worry in a few months there will be articles with the adoption rate being really high, as usual.

One part that might play a role here is that there were likely more people with iPhone 4 phones that can't upgrade which would impact the numbers to some degree, possibly more than before.
 
And by next August, the iOS 8 will likely be back close to 90% as normal, as older devices get updated and more of the newer devices get activated. Another data point that came up is the larger number of iOS device owners that intend to upgrade to an iPhone 6/6 Plus on this cycle. With more users intending to upgrade their devices, why would they bother with a huge OS download if they're looking to buy something new?

http://www.tuaw.com/2014/09/18/ios-8-adoption-rate-starts-off-slow-but-the-reasons-are-clear/

Frankly, the reviews and forum posts for iOS 7 were much harsher than they've been for iOS 8, so I don't get where you come up with this hyperbole that Apple is "destroying user trust." From my vantage point, the iOS 8.0 upgrade went smoothly, and it's much more stable than 7.0 was.
 
C DM said:
One part that might play a role here is that there were likely more people with iPhone 4 phones that can't upgrade which would impact the numbers to some degree, possibly more than before.
Click to expand...

No. Every year there is an iPhone that is not updatable, nothing changed and we are talking about % adoption rate so sales numbers don't matter.
 
Anecdotally, in my circle the biggest hurdle to upgrading is easily the space requirement. Out of ten possible upgraders I've talked to, one wasn't aware of the update, two had updated, and the rest were struggling with freeing storage. The two that had upgraded were satisfied with iOS 8 and had no major qualms.

This also throws into sharper relief the 16 gig iPhone 6 models. At this point that capacity seems nearly punitive...
 
Not suprisng. Half of iOS 8's features are either not yet available or require developers to update their apps to take advantage of them. Add that to the fact its buggy as hell at the moment and there isn't that much impetus to upgrade. Compared to iOS 7 last year where we all got a new look, instant new features etc.
 
X-X said:
No. Every year there is an iPhone that is not updatable, nothing changed and we are talking about % adoption rate so sales numbers don't matter.
Click to expand...
Conveniently forgetting that the iPhone 4 was the first one where AT&T exclusivity ended and it bacame widely available on many more carriers than any that came before. Ignoring that simply means not looking at reality. And as I mentioned that's just one contributing factor that is somewhat different than before, not that it somehow is behind it all.

Judging by how little people even know about updates even if there are articles and new stories about them, the supposed bugginess of iOS 8 would likely not be much of a factor as most wouldn't even have a clue about it even if it was truly there and widespread.
 
C DM said:
Conveniently forgetting that the iPhone 4 was the first one where AT&T exclusivity ended
Click to expand...

EVERY iPhone sold more than the iPhone before, so your argument is actually working against you.
 
X-X said:
EVERY iPhone sold more than the iPhone before, so your argument is actually working against you.
Click to expand...
That is still a different level of increase. Opening it up to everyone outside of of just one carrier is not even in the same league as just every model selling more than before.
 
I'm throwing in another vote for the space requirement being a large contributing factor. It's one thing for Apple to continue selling 16 GB phones, it's another thing altogether to require that over 40% of the phone's usable space be available for an update. I don't care if there's no other way for them to go about OTA updates, it's ridiculous.

At the very least, they should inform the user that if they don't want to free up space, they can plug the phone into iTunes. Sure, throw the whole "I thought iOS was post-PC!" crap around, but at least it's an option.
 
C DM said:
That is still a different level of increase.
Click to expand...

No, there are way way way more iPhones compatible with iOS 8 than not.

The iPhone 5 + iPhone 5s sold more than every iPhone before combined.
 
X-X said:
No, there are way way way more iPhones compatible with iOS 8 than not.

The iPhone 5 + iPhone 5s sold more than every iPhone before combined.
Click to expand...
And yet even with that you'd have a hard time linking it all to supposed bugginess that the vast majority don't even know about and wouldn't really know about.
 
X-X said:
So why aren't people updating than.
Click to expand...
Plenty of reasons mentioned so far in the thread. Primary ones being the space requirement and perhaps download issues that might have pushed it off for some people to something they would try later.
 
People are gonna have a lot of fun with their 16GB iPhone 6.
 
X-X said:
People are gonna have a lot of fun with their 16GB iPhone 6.
Click to expand...
Works fine. For updates iTunes can be used if needed. The 8 GB people would likely be in more trouble although iTunes can help as well.
 
X-X said:
So why aren't people updating than.
Click to expand...

There are FAR more people on the iPhone 4 this year then there were on the 3GS last year. Usage of the 4 is at about 13 percent. I think the 3GS was around 1-2 percent.

Combined with the fact that iOS 8 is running poorly on A5 devices, and that there are a large number of A5 devices being used (And in the case of the iPad Mini 1 + iPod touch 5 still being sold). 21% are on the 4S and have been warned not to update due to performance issues. 29% of people are on the iPad 2, 20 percent on the iPad Mini and 13 percent still on the iPad 3. That is a large number of people on devices that will take a performance hit upon updating - thus people may not want to update.
 
Jessica Lares said:
It was most likely because of this. iOS 7 was only 1GB in comparison.
Click to expand...

That's the size of the download file, not the total space needed to do the installation using iCloud. When updating OTA, you need the extra space to house the installation file, unpacked update files, and backups of the prior OS installation. This is all a safeguard in case anything goes awry during the installation process.

As others have said, I suspect that more people now use OTA updates by default, so the space requirement is now more of an issue than it was when everyone had to use a PC with iTunes to perform an iOS upgrade.
 
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