According to latest statistics on Apple’s developer page, iOS 8 now powers 81 per cent of all Apple devices – a 2 per cent points increase over last month when it accounted for 79 per cent share and a 13 per cent point increase over last quarter.
With iOS 8 leading the charts, iOS 7 now runs on just 17 per cent of devices with 2 per cent devices still stuck on older iOS versions. The primary reasons behind the increase in share could be because of the 61.2 million iPhones sold in the previous quarter.
Statistics from other analytics and mobile marketing firms including Mixpanel, and Fisku show similar kind of adoption rates. Mixpanel pegs iOS 8 share at 82 per cent, while Fisku puts iOS 8 share at 79 per cent.
Fragmentation hasn’t been a huge issue for Apple as users are always ready to jump to the latest version of the iOS as soon as it is released. Incompatibility with older devices is the one of the major reasons why we see iOS 7 and its predecessors still running on a few devices.
Android on the other hand isn’t the land of one ruler. Though Google has released newer version of Android post Jelly Bean, it is still one of the dominant mobile OS in the Android world. KitKat is another such version which is still going on strong despite the release of Android 5.0 Lollipop. Android 5 has been around for six months now, but it has only managed to garner a paltry share of 5 per cent.
