Apple is pushing out iOS 9 today for all iOS device users, but how quickly will they decide to update their iPhones? The adoption rate for the newest version of the operating system is extremely important for Apple and a topic management has discussed in the past when they have positive news to report.
iOS 9 adoption expected to be faster than iOS 8
The problem the company could face this year is that last year’s version, iOS 8, caused massive headaches for those who downloaded it early. Despite this, the folks at Crittercism actually expect the adoption rate to grow faster this year than it has in previous years. They put together some charts after analyzing customer data from more than 26 billion app loads.
As you can see from the chart below, by Sunday, the firm believes 20% of iOS device users will have upgraded to iOS 9. This includes purchasers of the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus because they come with iOS 9 preloaded right out of the box. If Apple is able to achieve a 20% adoption rate in just a few days, it would put it on par with Android Lollipop right now, according to Crittercism. However, it would also mean that Apple was able to accomplish what Android accomplished in only four days, compared to Lollipop’s 11 months to reach 20%.
By one week from today, the firm projects a 31% adoption rate for iOS 9, which is slightly slower than iOS 8’s adoption rate of 35% in the same time frame. The reason for this is because they think iOS users will approach iOS 9 with some trepidation because of last year’s horrendous update cycle. However, they apparently expect the concerns to pass quickly, as they project that half of iOS users to upgrade to iOS 9 by day 25, making the adoption of this year’s version three days faster than that of iOS 8 last year.
iOS 9 rollout should go more smoothly
Further, Crittercism expects the iOS 9 update cycle to go more smoothly than iOS 8 did because the crash rate. It’s currently 2.77%, which is just 14.46% higher than the last two versions. iOS 8, on the other hand, launched with a 3.48% crash rate during the same time frame of launch.
Another big problem last year was that iOS 8 took up so much space that users with a lot of photos and videos on their phones had to clear a lot of space just to download it. However, it should be easier this year, as iOS 9 only needs 1.3 gigabytes of space to be downloaded.
Also Apple should have learned its lesson last year with all the problems caused by iOS 8, so the company will likely be vigilant again this year in terms of fixing bugs as soon as they surface. Last year, it only took about a week for the company to push out the first update to iOS 8 to fix some of the biggest problems.
Does iOS 9 slow down older iPhones?
One concern users of older iPhones may have is that iOS 9 will slow down their devices dramatically. In a video from The Wall Street Journal, Personal Technology Columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler considered whether Apple was using each year’s operating system upgrade to convince users to also upgrade their iPhones by making older models slow down after receiving the new version. He said his theory was that we’d “basically be bullied” by Apple into buying a new iPhone each year because of the new version of the operating system.
To test his theory, he tested a wide array of older phones, which he described as American Ninja Warrior, only with four generations of iPhones.” He measured boot time to the lock screen, launching the camera, opening Apple’s Safari web browser, and pulling up a photo that had just been taken. He timed each of these three times on each phone on iOS 8 and then upgraded them to iOS 9 and did the tests again.
iOS 9 brings improvements
Interestingly, his test disproved his theory, at least for iOS 9. He said the new version of Apple’s operating system only slowed down the older phones by a “teensy” amount and actually sped them up in some areas. Specifically, he said Apple finally fixed a bug that made pulling up a photo that had just been taken “painfully” slow in older models. He estimates that this action has been sped up by about 80% with iOS 9, no matter for the age.
Andrew Levy, co-founder and CEO of Crittercism, also noted that iOS 9 brings some big improvements this year, especially in terms of battery life. Apple also added a low power mode to delay email fetching and app updates.
“This mode is at the expense of performance which isn’t a big deal on the iPhone 5.x series of devices but could be too detrimental to be useful on the iPhone 4S or older versions of the iPad,” he suggested.
Graphs are courtesy Crittercism.
