iOS 9 Now Adopted By Over Half Of All Apple Mobile Devices

Here is some good news from Apple -- the latest version of its iOS mobile operating system, iOS 9, is now on over 50 percent of all iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch devices. The company had revealed the information last Monday, declaring that its newest iOS version has the fastest adoption rate of any ever. 

Apple normally determines the adoption rate of its iOS platform by counting the number of mobile devices that visit the Apple Store on a given date. The 50 percent score is based on Apple’s App Store statistics compiled as of Saturday, September 19th of this year. This is pretty amazing considering that last Saturday marked only the fourth day since the global rollout of the tech giant’s iOS 9.

Philip Schiller, senior market vice president of Apple, stated via a press release that this remarkable start by iOS 9 is on pace to become the fastest adoption rate ever by any software released by Apple. The iPhone maker began its worldwide rollout of its newest iOS version last Wednesday, offering new features and enhancements to mobile users’ iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches. 

iOS 9’s numbers are truly incredible compared to previous versions. Last year’s iOS 8 was released on September 17th of 2014, and got an impressive 48 percent adoption rate by September 22nd of the same year. But after that initial leap, the pace began to slow down, and it was only on October 20th (over a month since its release date) that iOS 8 was able to reach beyond the 50 percent mark (52 percent).

Of course, it did not help that iOS 8 was plagued with some technical glitches at first. Also, Apple only managed to incorporate new features in subsequent sub-versions of iOS 8, e.g. Apple Pay debuted in version 8.1 and then Apple Music in version 8.4. By September of this year, iOS 8 had reached an adoption rate of 87 percent.

Apple clearly learned a lot of things from the technical issues it encountered with the release of iOS 8. With iOS 9, the tech giant is doing its best to minimize such problems. However, there are bound to be some snags. For instance, some first adopters of iOS 9 are already complaining that the latest iOS version caused specific mobile apps to crash. 

On a related note, Apple also revealed that its latest iPhone models, the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus, will be made available to consumers visiting the company’s retail stores beginning at 8 AM local time on Friday, September 25th of this year.