Category Archives: iOS 8

Adoption, Android, Apple, Google, iOS, iOS 8, iOS 9, Microsoft, Mixpanel, Operating Systems, Windows

Operating system user bases

October 7, 2015 Jan Dawson 4 Comments

Related: two previous posts on the patterns in Android adoption rates (December 2013, March 2014), a post contrasting iOS and Android adoption patterns, and a post from last month on iOS 9 adoption.

Both Apple and Google have just updated their mobile OS user stats, while Microsoft shared a new number for Windows 10 adoption at its event this week, giving us a rare opportunity to make some comparisons between these major operating systems at a single point in time. We now have the following stats straight from the sources:

The stats provided by both Apple and Google on their developer sites with regard to the user distribution across their mobile operating systems (Android and iOS)
The 110 million Windows 10 number provided by Microsoft this week
The 1.4 billion total active Android user base number provided by Google at its event last week
Total Windows users of around 1.5 billion, as reported by Microsoft several times at recent events.

In addition, there are various third party sources for additional data, including NetMarketShare and its estimate of the usage of other versions of Windows. Lastly, I have estimated that there are roughly 500 million iPhones in use now, and around 775 million iOS devices in use in total (including iPads and iPod Touches).

If we take all these data sets together, it’s possible to arrive at a reasonably good estimate for the actual global user bases of major operating system versions at the present time. The chart below shows the result of this analysis:There are several things worth noting here:

Each company has one entry in the top three, with Microsoft first, Google second, and Apple third.
However, only one of these entrants is the latest version of that company’s operating system (iOS 9), while the other two are the third most recent versions (Windows 7 and Android KitKat).
Google has three of the top six operating systems, none of which is its latest operating system (Marshmallow, released this past week). Even its second most recent version (Lollipop), now available for a year, is only the third most adopted version after KitKat and Jelly Bean.
Both iOS 9 and iOS 8 and the three most used versions of Android beat out every version of Windows but Windows 7.
The most recent versions of the three companies’ major operating systems are used by a little over 400 million (iOS 9), 110 million (Windows 10), and a negligible number (Android Marshmallow) respectively.
The second most recent versions are used by around 330 million (Android Lollipop), around 250 million (iOS 8), and around 200 million (Windows 8) respectively.

There are lots more data points to tease out here, but to my mind it’s a striking illustration of the differences in the size and adoption rates of these three major operating systems.

Two additional thoughts

Just for interest, I’m including a couple of additional thoughts below.

First off, here’s the same chart, but with iOS reduced to just the iPhone base. The order changes a fair amount, but iOS 8 and iOS 9 still make a good showing:

Lastly, I wanted to revisit my post from a couple of weeks ago about the initial adoption of iOS 9, especially as it relates to Mixpanel’s data. In that post, I showed how Mixpanel’s iOS adoption data tends to be pretty close to Apple’s own data except for the month or so after a new version of iOS ships, when it tends to skew way lower than Apple’s own data. Now that we’re a few weeks on from the initial launch, and Apple has released the second set of iOS adoption data since the launch, I wanted to revisit that pattern. Interestingly, the very same pattern is playing out again – despite the initial significant discrepancy, Mixpanel’s data is now once again very close to Apple’s own:

Adoption, Android, Android versions, Apple, Google, iOS, iOS 8, Smartphones

Contrasting iOS and Android adoption patterns

April 10, 2015 Jan Dawson 10 Comments

I’ve done two previous posts (here and here) on Google’s Android developer dashboard stats, and I was surprised to find it’s been just over a year since my last one. I may still do a deeper dive revisiting some of the points from those previous posts, but this time around I wanted to do something different – contrast Android and iOS adoption patterns. Google has published data on Android version adoption for quite some time now, but Apple’s only been doing it for the last couple of years, so we have less data. But we still have enough from both platforms that we can draw some interesting conclusions.

iOS adoption – huge initial ramp plus slow conversion

The pattern for iOS adoption is very clear – a massive initial ramp in adoption in the first few days and weeks, followed by a steady conversion over time. The chart below shows the share of the base on each version in the first 24 months from launch:

As you can see, by the time the first month is over, more than 50% of the base is already on the new version, and it ramps to around 90-95% by a year later, just before the next version launches. At that point, it immediately drops to 25-30% as the new version takes over, and slowly dwindles from there down to under 10% after two years. There are differences in adoption rates for the various versions shown – as has been reported, iOS 8 has seen a slower initial adoption rate than iOS 7, though it’s now over 75%. Correspondingly, the share of iOS 7 has fallen slightly more slowly than iOS 6 did, though the gap in both cases has closed a bit recently. Continue reading →

Apple, Apple TV, Developer events, Developers, fragmentation, Google, HealthKit, HomeKit, iOS, iOS 8, iWatch, Microsoft, OS X, Smart home, Smartwatches, Wearables, WWDC, WWDC 2014, Yosemite

Apple resurgent – thoughts on WWDC

June 2, 2014 Jan Dawson

Today’s WWDC keynote was a sign of a renewed swagger on the part of Apple, whose executives seemed to relish the deluge of new product announcements they unleashed on developers and on their customers. In the process Apple established or strengthened its competitive positioning against two major foes – Microsoft and Google – while opening itself up in unparalleled ways to developers. Today’s announcements may come to be seen in the same way as Steve Jobs’ original launch of Mac OS X, in that it lays the groundwork in several areas for years of future Apple products.

The demotion of Google continues

Two years ago at WWDC, Apple removed erstwhile close partner Google from the iPhone in two significant areas: as the backend provider for the Maps app, and in the form of the pre-installed YouTube app. But Google’s last major bastion on iOS is its position as the default search engine in Safari, and it’s much harder to remove there. In the sense of typing a query into a search box or address bar in a browser, hitting enter and being presented with a screen of blue links, Google is unrivaled, and Apple knows that. But it has slowly been inserting itself between the user and that search box over the last couple of years, and today’s keynote provided further evidence of Apple’s pre-empting of the Google search on both iOS and OS X devices.

Apple’s more subtle disruption of the user-Google relationship began with the launch of Siri, which began to address some users’ queries without an explicit search, and which uses Wikipedia, Wolfram Alpha and Bing, but not Google, as underlying search providers. And it has continued since then, as more third party services have been layered into Siri, pre-empting the Google search for movie listings, restaurant reservations and sports scores. Today’s keynote added Spotlight search to the list of places where users will now find answers to their queries without the classic search box experience, thus further inserting Apple between users and Google.

This is potentially significant for Google, for which the US continues to be easily its single biggest and most lucrative market, and for which mobile is increasingly important. To the extent that iPhone users, which make over 40% of US smartphone users, start using Apple and its tightly integrated third party services instead of Google, for search, that’s pretty bad news. That isn’t, of course, why Apple is taking these steps, but it’s an unpleasant side effect for Google. And a great way for Apple to participate in the search business without having to match Google in the page-of-blue-links business.

A device for every need, not one device for every need

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Beyond Devices