Apple iOS 7.1 Shows Little Sign Of Stopping As Adoption Of The Update Hits 12 Percent In First Two Days

When Apple released iOS 7 in September it quickly became one of the fastest adopted mobile operating systems. Almost 80 percent of all Apple users had installed the newest version of iOS within four months of the release. With Apple’s recent update of iOS 7.1 on Monday, the Cupertino-based company is seeing customers adopt the minor update in a similar fashion. According to a study done by the online ad network Chitika, iOS 7.1 reached 6 percent of users within the first day and 12 percent by hour 45.

Chitika gathered the data used for this study through skimming ad data from its network. The US-based company “examined tens of millions of U.S. and Canadian iOS-based online ad impressions generated within the Chitika Ad Network,” interpreting that information into the graphs above and below. However, it is important to state that the adoption rate seen is only on devices that scan their ads, as well as the report measures page views individually instead of measuring unique visitors, so the data might be skewed in some way causing the true percentage of adoption to be different. However, the rise from 6 percent to 12 percent in one day does show a rapid increase within a sample.

The ad company is quick to point out that the adoption rate of iOS 7.1 is similar to that of the first update, iOS 7.06, which released on Feb 21. Within 48 hours, iOS 7.06 had been installed on 13.3 percent of devices. By Feb 25, four days after the release of the update, iOS 7.06 had only reached 25 percent, which shows a steady gain of 6 percent per day. iOS 7.1 is duplicating that installation almost exactly.

iOS 7.06 was an incremental security release, fixing some encryption issues within the mail app. iOS 7.1 was a major update in contrast. It brought fixes to the user experience, user interface, Touch ID system and eliminated a springboard crash issue that many iPhone 5s users had been experiencing. It supposedly sped up the experience on the iPhone 4 as well, however, tests have shown that iOS 6, the previous version, is superior to iOS 7 on the older handset.