iOS 8 adoption flat at 84 percent, but iOS 8.4 matches Android KitKat and Jelly Bean adoption

iOS 8 teaser 001

A history of iOS 8 usage paints a rosy picture of more or less steady adoption of Apple’s latest and greatest mobile operating system. But according to latest data published Wednesday on Apple’s dashboard for developers, iOS 8 adoption rates have remained flat at 84 percent of iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices in the wild, as measured by the App Store on July 6, 2015.

Two weeks ago, the same 84 percent figure was captured by Apple, indicating that the number of users who have upgraded from previous iOS editions to iOS 8, or bought a new device with iOS 8 pre-installed, wasn’t enough to move the needle.

More interesting than that, however, is the latest data point by analysts Mixpanel which basically tells us that the recently-released iOS 8.4 software update now accounts for 40 percent of all iOS usage, just one week after release.

Two weeks ago, iOS 8 adoption rate stood at 84 percent, iOS 7 commanded a fourteen percent share and the remaining two percent of devices were running an ‘Earlier’ iOS version.

iOS 8 adoption rate 84 percent

The above chart is true for today, too.

As mentioned before, Mixpanel data suggests that iOS 8.4 is now powering a cool forty percent of iOS devices in the wild, an astounding achievement for what is basically a point iOS release. I would speculate that the vast majority of people who ran iOS 8.x have upgraded to iOS 8.4 to check out Apple Music.

Another way to look at it: iOS 8.4 has managed to match the adoption rate of Android KitKat and Jelly Bean, just one week after its release and despite the fact that these Android editions have been around for two or more years.

Mixpanel Apple Music adoption

But that doesn’t come as a shock.

iOS 8.4 includes Apple’s revamped Music app with Apple Music built-in so clearly a lot of people have rushed to upgrade to iOS 8.4, thereby indicating high initial demand for Apple’s $10 per month subscription music service which comes with a generous three-month free trial.

The chart below depicts how quickly consumers have been upgrading to iOS 8 since its release in September of last year.

Mixpanel iOS 8 adoption

Meanwhile, Google’s Android continues to suffer from device and OS fragmentation.

According to Google’s own Android distribution numbers, Android 5.0 and 5.1 Lollipop have at long last managed to break past the twelve percent mark, as determined by monitoring Play Store access data during a 7-day period ending on June 1, 2015.

Lollipop was introduced more than a year ago.

Android adoption rate table 20150601

Android 4.1.x Jelly Bean versions account for more than one out of each three Android devices that have accessed the Play store recently, or 37.4 percent installed base.  Android 4.4 KitKat, which is almost two years old now, powers about four out of each ten Android smartphones and tablets out there.

An incredible 63 percent of Android devices support the now outdated OpenGL 2.0 graphics subsystem, with forty percent of devices having HDPI screens and more than 83 percent of them having normal-sized screens.

Google Android adoption screen sizes 20150708

Google’s official Android distribution data is gathered from the new Google Play Store app, which supports Android 2.2 and above, meaning devices running older versions are not included.

Google’s stats also don’t take into account tens of millions of “white label” devices from China that run third-party application stores, Amazon’s Fire hardware based on forked Android builds and other devices which don’t run Google Play services.

Source: Apple, Mixpanel