iOS users reach newer version 3X faster than Android
updated 07:35 pm EST, Mon November 21, 2011
Jumptap says 32pc of users already on iOS 5
iOS users reach the newest version of their platform about three times faster than their Android counterparts, Jumptap found after checking its traffic. About 32 percent of iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch owners on Jumptap's ad network were on the new OS just 15 days after launch. Even nine months after Android 2.3 had arrived, however, it was only just slightly larger than the 2.2 update at 44.4 percent.
The BlackBerry was even further behind, as only 25 percent were on last year's BlackBerry 6 or newer. At 48 percent, nearly half were using BlackBerry OS 5, a platform that was current in 2009; 27 percent were using some version of OS 4.
The mobile ad network pinned the lag for Android and the BlackBerry directly on Google and RIM giving up control of the update process. Both Android and the BlackBerry usually have to wait for carrier approval, while Google's OS also depends on hardware partners not only upgrading on time but choosing not to consciously abandon a phone early. Apple both makes the hardware and has more control over the carrier process, leading to every technically capable device having the option to update immediately, not months later.
A look into the rivalry between Apple and Samsung provided its own insight into early iPhone 4S adoption and usage habits. By the end of October, Apple's new phone was already four percent of its user base and had cut equally into iPhone 3GS and 4 owners, suggesting that notions of most upgraders having 2009-era or earlier iPhones wasn't true.
iPhone hits on Jumptap's network were growing slightly faster from day to day, at 33 percent to 32. Some of that came from usage patterns: although there were 37 percent more requests from Samsung phones, a typical iPhone owner was twice as active online. Samsung owners used apps 27 percent more often, suggesting that time spent in apps kept them off the web a disproportionately larger amount of time.
Android was as usual leading in collective share, at 44.7 percent of the traffic this past month to iOS' 24.6 percent. HTC was the top individual brand in the US, but that wasn't expected to hold as pent-up iPhone 4S demand and the addition of Sprint both boosted iPhone sales and dragged down HTC as customers picked the iPhone over devices like the Evo 3D.
