The take-up of Apple's latest iOS point upgrade,
7.1, reached 17.9 percent of all iOS web traffic in North America just
72 hours after its initial launch, according to a follow-up study from mobile analyst
Chitika. The firm studied tens of millions of ad impressions to draw its figures, which are in line with recent point releases from Apple. The company says that iOS 7.1 is on track to surpass the recent 7.0.6 update within a few days.
While the 7.1 release on Monday also contained security fixes, its adoption rate is nonetheless in line with that of 7.0.6, which was issued early to fix a potentially serious flaw. The recent stats on user adoption of iOS upgrades suggest that users are comfortable with the process and that most have left the default of automatic downloading (which still requires manual consent to install) in place.
Overall, the adoption rate of iOS 7.x is around 80 percent of all US and Canadian iOS web traffic, and by far the platform with the highest ratio of up-to-date users, even surpassing OS X (the userbase of which is also known for quickly implementing updates). Chitika had previously reported that v7.1 had achieved six percent adoption after its first full day, which means early adopters continued to implement the update at the same pace, at least through its first three days. The study looked at takeup of the update between March 9 and 12, and if it continues at the present rate it will surpass iOS 7.0.6 in share by the start of next week.
The iOS 7.1 release features the addition of
CarPlay support for upcoming 2014 vehicles; some design tweaks to the keyboard and Phone app buttons; new "slide to power off" and "slide to unlock" animations; more user control over fonts, brightness and other UI features; new support for head-gestures for disabled users, and other "fit and polish" changes to the Camera app, Touch ID consistency, Calendar functionality and other minor enhancements -- including significant speedups to OS animations (such as opening and closing folders) that make moving around the operating system noticeably smoother, even for those on older equipment like the iPhone 4.
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