iOS 8 Adoption Stagnates Just Two and a Half Weeks After Launch
After almost three weeks of availability, Apple's iOS 8 operating system is now installed on 47 percent of devices, according to new numbers posted on Apple's App Store support page for developers.
Context & Ripple Effects
iOS 8's rollout has lost momentum: Apple's own App Store support page puts the OS on just 47 percent of active devices roughly two and a half weeks after launch, and the number has stopped climbing. That is well behind the curve set by earlier releases — iOS 6 reached 61 percent in the U.S. and Canada only a month after launch in 2012, and Apple reported iOS 7 at 74 percent based on App Store usage numbers by December 2013.
The story traveled widely for a single-day data point, picked up by Fiksu, TechCrunch, 9to5Mac, Macworld, Engadget, ZDNet, AppleInsider and The Register, because adoption speed is effectively a scoreboard for how fast Apple's newest platform features reach users. With an October 16 event already scheduled around iPads, iMacs and the Yosemite Mac OS update — which pairs with iOS 8 — Apple has a near-term opportunity to re-accelerate the curve.
First-order effects
- Developers building on iOS 8-only capabilities — system-wide third-party keyboards among them — face a smaller reachable audience than the same point in the iOS 6 or iOS 7 cycles, since less than half of devices can run their code.
Second-order effects
- App teams must keep shipping and testing against iOS 7 for longer than they planned, splitting engineering effort across two OS generations and delaying when they can drop legacy support or rely on iOS 8 APIs outright.
Third-order effects
- If each autumn release reaches critical mass more slowly than the last, Apple's assumed rhythm — new APIs becoming dependable within weeks of launch — erodes, pushing developers toward lowest-common-denominator apps and making Apple's App Store usage statistics an even more closely watched adoption gauge.
The trend: Each iOS release is taking longer to saturate the installed base, stretching the support tail developers must carry and raising the stakes on Apple's post-launch fixes and companion releases like Yosemite to close the gap.