iOS 8 makes its way to 72% of customer devices

This is nearly double any Android version

According to the latest figures, Apple’s newest iOS 8 has gotten another bump in usage by a full 4 percentage point. The adoption rate of the iOS 8 was 68 percent when Apple had last updated these figures in January this year which now has been increased to 72 percent. Apple certainly has a very good and fast adoption rate and in total 97 percent of the iOS devices are running on the latest versions of the OS which were released in the last two years.

As compared to this, Google’s Android might appear to be in a bleak position. The recent data from Google on the Play Store shows that the adoption rate is still stuck at the 41.3 percent. A major chunk of these devices (39.7 percent) are running on the 2013 Android 4.4 KitKat and only 1.6 percent run 2014’s Lollipop.

As far as this huge difference in the adoption rates is concerned, there seems to be no obvious reason but there is one obvious disparity in iOS and Android; Apple has direct control over this entire process and this might be the distinguishing factor. Apple forbids its carriers to interfere in any way with the iOS, something we don’t see going on with Android.

The Nexus phones represent the only line which Google sells directly. Besides these, all other Android handsets are left at the mercy of the carriers and individual handset manufacturers who have full authority to customize the software as they see fit. Obviously there are certain guidelines which they will not be able to cross but the validness is lost. Because of these customizations, there are substantial delays. We can see this happening with the one year old Samsung Galaxy S5 which is finally getting the Android 5 Lollipop which has been released since 3 months.

There is also a trace of other handsets which never get any updates at all. The numbers show that nearly 14 percent of devices are still running on the older Android versions – as old as 2011 or even earlier.

source: apple