Ad data implies only 23% of iPhone owners updated to 3.1
A look at some recent statistics from mobile advertising firm AdMob gives us a rough idea of how iPhone users are upgrading to the latest software. A few weeks after its release, only about a fourth of AdMob's ad requests are coming …
Context & Ripple Effects
Two years after iPhone web browsing was first measured at under 0.1% of total traffic closing in on just .1%, the installed base is large enough that a single ad network's request logs can function as an unofficial census of what software those handsets run.
AdMob is well positioned to play that measuring role: it hit profitability in 2008 and raised $15.7 million on the strength of it, and its network now implies that only about 23% of ad-visible iPhones were running OS 3.1 a few weeks after release.
First-order effects
- Developers deciding whether to require OS 3.1-only APIs face a base where roughly three-quarters of the iPhones showing up in ad traffic still run older software, so cutting off legacy versions means abandoning most of the measurable audience.
- Advertisers and analysts gain a version-level breakdown of the iPhone fleet that Apple does not itself publish, making AdMob's logs a de facto adoption scoreboard.
Second-order effects
- Rival mobile ad networks have an incentive to publish their own device-and-OS breakdowns, turning network statistics into competitive marketing material.
- Slow uptake of each point release pressures Apple's developer-relations pitch, since the value of building against the newest SDK depends on how fast the fleet actually moves.
Third-order effects
- If every OS release leaves a long tail of un-upgraded handsets, developers will carry multi-version compatibility costs indefinitely, slowing how quickly new platform features propagate through the app ecosystem.
- Third-party traffic data stands in for official disclosure, establishing ad-network measurements as the recurring public metric for mobile OS adoption.
The trend: Mobile OS adoption is becoming a story told through third-party ad-network traffic rather than vendor announcements, with each release's uptake speed shaping developer decisions.