It appears that the excitement over iOS upgrades has waned as huge swathes of iOS 7 users appear to be reluctant – or unable – to upgrade to iOS 8.
Data released by Apple shows that 56 percent of users accessing the Apple App Store are currently running iOS 8 or above, with 40 percent still clinging onto iOS 7. The needle has barely shifted since the end of October when iOS 8 adoption hit 52 percent.
Since the end of October iOS 8 usage has only increased by four percentage points.
At its peak, iOS 7 hit 78 percent adoption.
There are a number of obstacles in the way of people upgrading their iOS device. The first is that the OTA – Over The Air – download is many gigabytes, making it problematic for people with a slow internet connection.
Then there's the fact that the update requires a huge amount of free space to install, forcing users to delete apps and data. Depending on your hardware, you'll need between 4.7GB and 6.9GB of free storage space, and that's massive, especially for devices that started out with only 16GB of space in the beginning (minus what iOS takes when installed).
This problem can be overcome by doing the update through iTunes on a PC or Mac, but many users no longer connect their iDevice to a computer.
Then there was the iOS 8.0.1 update that wreaked havoc for new iPhone 6 Plus owners. This incident, albeit rather limited in scope, dented confidence in Apple being able to deliver problem-free updates.
While 56 percent adoption in 40 days is slow for Apple, put in the context of Android it is excellent penetration. Android 4.4 KitKat, debuted at the end of October 2013, is still hovering at around 30 percent a year later.
