The majority of iOS device owners have upgraded to the latest version of the operating system, according to a new report from third-party analysts Localytics. The final public version of Apple’s mobile OS was pushed out to the world almost exactly a month ago, on Sept. 16.
Apple says 50 percent of “active” users were on iOS 9 after just five days, though it appears they may have been somewhat optimistic in their claims — it looks as though Apple was only counting people who visited the App Store during that time frame, so those users who weren’t desperate to install some new software apps during the first week would’ve been excluded.
Now Localytics says the figure stands at 55 percent, with adoption rates faster than those for iOS 8 but still way behind iOS 7. In the last two weeks, the analytics firm says, adoption has slowed significantly — perhaps indicating that a lot of users are waiting for the early bugs to get ironed out. Since Sept. 16, Apple has released iOS 9.0.1 and iOS 9.0.2 to squash some of the bugs reported by users.
Localytics, which studied data from around 50 million iOS devices to come up with its figures, says adoption has been slowest in China, where only 36 percent of users have upgraded. Germany is top of the pile, with 64 percent of users in that country installing the new software (the figure for the U.S. stands at 57 percent).
Apple is always keen to point how fragmented the Android OS market is when compared with iOS, though of course it doesn’t have to deal with multiple handset models and manufacturer skins added by the likes of Samsung and HTC. It seems that while iOS 9 has proved more tempting to users than iOS 8, there are still plenty of people taking their time.
