iOS 11 hits 85% adoption ahead of iOS 12; Android Oreo at 14.6%

Less than a month before iOS 12 goes gold, iOS 11 has reached an 85 percent installation rate across eligible devices — over 5.8 times the percentage of Google’s Android Oreo across Android devices. The latest statistic was published by Apple today based on App Store usage yesterday.

Despite new feature additions, serious bugs and other issues led iOS 11 to fall behind iOS 10’s adoption rate during their respective first years. iOS 11 wound up taking nearly two months to cross the 50 percent threshold, four months to hit two-thirds of devices, and seven months to cross the three-quarters mark. Around 11 months after it went gold, iOS 11 hit 85 percent, with iOS 10 now at 10 percent and earlier versions at 5 percent. Unusually, Apple does not indicate any percentage of users on the beta version of iOS 12, which has been circulating for three months.

As is no surprise at this point, adoption of the latest Android version isn’t even close to iOS. Oreo 8.0 and 8.1 installations collectively constitute 14.6 percent of the Android user base, Google said, based on seven days of data collection ending August 31, with Nougat at 30.8 percent, Marshmallow at 22.7 percent, and Lollipop at 19.2 percent, with earlier versions collectively at 12.7 percent. Google provided no percentage for Android 9 Pie, but says that anything under 0.1 percent isn’t listed on its chart.

The differences are in part due to a much wider array of Android devices than iOS ones, and also is the result of splintered manufacturer support for Android updates. Android users are less likely to be able to quickly — and in some cases, ever — update their devices after release, leaving them vulnerable to security flaws and without subsequently debuted features.

Following a three-month beta and promising improved performance, iOS 12 is expected to become available in mid to late September for iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches, after Apple’s September “Gather round” media event. Android 9 Pie was released on August 8, but is currently only available for Google Pixel devices and the Essential Phone.