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iOS 9 now installed on over 60% of devices, according to latest Apple App Store data

Apple has once again updated its App Store data chart with the latest statistics on iOS 9 adoption. iOS 9 came out of the gate with a ridiculously-high >50% adoption rate just a few days after it launched. This pace has definitely slowed following the initial rush of users upgrading, but achieving 61% penetration of iOS devices is still a strong result. This appears to be keeping up with Phil Schiller’s prediction that iOS 9 will be “downloaded by more users than any other software release in Apple’s history.” Remember, iOS 9 can be installed on any iPhone, iPad or iPod touch that runs iOS 8.

For a comparison, it took iOS 8 until late November to reach the 60% mark as reported by the App Store, so upgrades are happening roughly twice as fast. There will also be a likely boost this week as many people will be encouraged to update to iOS 9.1 thanks to the addition of new emojis, which are featured prominently in the release notes when you update. Moreover, the number of people on iOS 9 will continue to rise naturally as all new devices sales (iPhone 6s, new iPads, etc) ship with iOS 9 pre-installed.

iOS 9 includes many system tweaks to make it easier to update, such as lower free space requirements, the ability to automatically update overnight whilst the user is sleeping as well as temporarily delete apps whilst the update takes place. It’s nice to see that these changes are having a real-world effect on OS software update rates.

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Comments

  1. So much for the “smaller” updates. 9.02 > 9.1 is 1.84GB

  2. drtyrell969 - 8 years ago

    Consequently, 60% of all iOS devices just got horribly SLOW.

  3. PhilBoogie - 8 years ago

    I wonder what Android users think of iOS users always running the latest and greatest. Never mind, I already know:

    🖕

    • Gregory Wright - 8 years ago

      Probably nothing because most understand the difficulty of getting all the entities involved with pushing android updates to users. With IOS there is one entity, Apple.

    • cdm283813 - 8 years ago

      Coming from Samsung it’s great that my 6S got updated yesterday but at the same time I will lose my jail break. I had my phone tweaked out but then I realized that I have to stay on older software which defeated the purpose of switching to iOS in the first place.
      I wish Apple would embrace jail breaking for enthusiast. That’s why I still rank Nexus phones above any phone on the market when it comes to updates and tweaking. All the other Android OEM’s can go to hell.

      • viciosodiego - 8 years ago

        I used ac backup to backup my jailbreak on my iPod touch backup to dropbox or your computer.
        And then do a backup on iTunes restore and update.
        And wate for the next jailbreak.

    • standardpull - 8 years ago

      Android users don’t care. They are dreaming of their next phone, as the phone they bought three months ago can’t be updated to the latest release.

      That’s the power of Android to handset manufacturers.

    • chrisl84 - 8 years ago

      Good God I can’t wait for the day for my fellow iPhone users to grow up and start taking the high road and stop with childish ass posts like this….But ANDROID….this isnt 2009 anyone can our side at least act like adults and not be so damn petty.

      • PhilBoogie - 8 years ago

        You’re right, that was indeed childish of me. Mean culpable

      • PhilBoogie - 8 years ago

        [thanks autocorrupt]

        That would be: Mea culpa.

        @Seth: are you guys by any chance looking to replace WordPress? We wouldn’t want to see visitors changing to a different site, would we

  4. robkow86 - 8 years ago

    Of course its that high. When you send constant annoying notifications to upgrade your OS on a daily basis, and give your user base no option to turn off these annoying reminders, then its apparent why Apple has such high rates.

    I for one don’t like being annoyed to instal the latest upgrade right away. Its risky because of potential bugs, and there are certain features that seem to always change that I just don’t like right away. Moreover, software I use for OS X isn’t supported on El Capitan yet, so I get to enjoy those constant annoyances on my mac as well.

    I thought I would never say this but, I will most likely be leaving Apple for this and switching to Windows/Android. Not that I particularly want to, but this is just another latest event where apple has switched course from being a company about making great products to one that cares about nothing but its bottom line.

    • PhilBoogie - 8 years ago

      Try this in Terminal:
      softwareupdate –schedule off

      • dcj001 - 8 years ago

        Or he can simply turn off caps software Update notifications in system preferences.

      • PhilBoogie - 8 years ago

        Well, yeah, but I made the assumption he already tried that and it wasn’t working. Why would he otherwise post about it?

        Ah, assumptions. The mother of all frick-ups.

    • vandiced - 8 years ago

      Bye! You won’t be missed!

  5. g0bez - 8 years ago

    I would be interested to see what the graph looks like over time, and what kind of bump it got when the iOS9 JailBreak was released. Mostly, I’m curious to see what percentage of iPhone users are JailBreaking…

  6. standardpull - 8 years ago

    It may be hilarious to us that new emojis are now featured bullet points on the iOS update notes.

    But many users don’t care about the correction of esoteric bugs and addition of minor features which never really mattered to them. They care about the social aspects of the device, and that, in a big way, includes the new Unicode Emoji characters.

    My family does not discuss that the bug with Notes when pasting in a non-breaking string of characters of length greater than 2047 in bold which results in the truncation of the final character has been addressed.

    We discuss the new middle finger icon. This is what users care about.

  7. Podcast App still crashing, thank you very much.

  8. Drew (@gettysburg11s) - 8 years ago

    My upgrade from iOS 9.0.2 to 9.1 was 252MB. Seems small to me. Works fine in any case.

  9. justincirello - 8 years ago

    I’m always the first of my peer group to update iPhone software. I will say that on my 64GB iPhone 6, I have noticed some sluggish performance especially when trying to do quick tasks such as opening Safari and doing a quick search for a business or phone number.

    Other than that, there are some buggy UI sequences but nothing to complain about. iOS 9 introduced some very minor changes that have a big impact, such as better multitasking and the low power mode. A lot of my friends go into the city a lot and battery is always a topic of discussion. Most of the time if I know I’ll be out all night, I’ll charge to 100% and keep lower power mode on the whole night. Some nights I’ll get home with 75% battery still left. Really great change and I expect even further improvement for iOS 10 and iPhone 7 (which all my friends will get once its released). Just my 2 cents.

  10. imabhisheksaini - 8 years ago

    ios 9 has 10 will be more better than ios 9. ios has some lack of features. Apple hinted the ios 10 release date. See more http://ios10news.com/

  11. 2013p4 - 8 years ago

    They tricked me into updating my iPad 3.
    I thought, cool an adblocker, that improves loading-time and performance of websites.
    It is only for 64-Bit devices. Why?

    Now it is slower.

Author

Avatar for Benjamin Mayo Benjamin Mayo

Benjamin develops iOS apps professionally and covers Apple news and rumors for 9to5Mac. Listen to Benjamin, every week, on the Happy Hour podcast. Check out his personal blog. Message Benjamin over email or Twitter.