iOS 8 Adoption Surpasses 50%

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The percentage of iPhone and iPad owners who've jumped to iOS 8 continues to climb, according to Apple. At the same time, crash rates have declined, showing that the latest version of Apple's mobile operating system has made much-needed performance improvements.

The most-recent statistics from Apple's Developer Support page indicate 52% of all iOS devices have upgraded to iOS 8.x. That leaves 43% still running iOS 7 and about 5% running iOS 6 or earlier. Five weeks from release, iOS 8's adoption rate is still trailing that of last year's iOS 7. In fact, the adoption rate appears to be somewhat stagnant. On October 6, the Apple Developer Support page showed that 46% of iOS device owners had jumped to iOS 8. Adoption has gone up just six percentage points over the course of the last 23 days.

Data from Crittercism suggests the arrival of iOS 8.1 has helped spur adoption of iOS 8. The newer iOS 8.1, which added Apple Pay and resolved a number of bugs, was released October 20. By October 22, 10.4% of iOS device owners had jumped to 8.1. By October 26, that number climbed to 23.4%. Crittercism believes the promise of bug fixes has led to the swift adoption of iOS 8.1. On October 20, iOS 8 had a crash rate of 3.0%. That rate slowly declined to 2.7% by the 26th. iOS 8.1's crash rate on the 26th was 2.17%, or about 20% less often than iOS 8. Crittercism derived these numbers by analyzing performance across more than 1 billion users worldwide.

iOS 8's arrival has been anything but smooth. The operating system, released on September 21, adds a handful of compelling user-facing features, but it is more focused on providing developers with additional tools for their apps. Crittercism said adoption of the new platform is low because it's a "nerd release." iOS 7 represented a major overhaul for the OS, which updated the platform's design for the first time since 2007. Visually, iOS 8 looks mostly the same as iOS 7 and perhaps consumers see less reason to jump aboard.

[Does Apple Pay add to the appeal of the new operating system? Read Apple Pay: Where To Use It.]

The original 8.0 release was somewhat buggy. Apple issued a patch, dubbed 8.0.1, but it was a disaster. It bricked iPhones, rendering them unable to access cellular networks. Apple was forced to yank the update and released 8.0.2 several days later.

How many of you have made the switch? If so, have you noticed a performance improvement since upgrading to iOS 8.1? Please feel free to add your comments below.

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