'200 million' fanbois using iOS 7 just a week after release - study

I would expect that at least 95% of people owning Android devices couldn't care less about fragmentation .... so long as they can play music & videos, access facebook, send SMS messages ..... and make telephone calls they will be happy with what they have.

I guess you missed the memo!

"Can Android match this kind of update?

Doubtful and that's down to fragmentation ..."

Google has separated an awful lot of what used to be "core" OS functionality out of the OS itself, and put it into the Apps, which can be maintained by user updates from the Play store, even on devices which are stick on older OEM / Telco "skinned" versions f Android.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/09/balky-carriers-and-slow-oems-step-aside-google-is-defragging-android/

All this talk of "Android Fragmentation" is massively overblown.

Not all iOS devices are the same. In general, the older the device, the more missing features there are, even though the OS version is the same across all of them.

Can Android match this kind of update?

As far as I can see from the string of articles written by Jasper Hamill, that's not news or even an observation you'll ever hear from him. I normally don't go personal, but I do have one expectation of someone calling themselves a journalist and that they are aware of their own bias and seek to preserve neutrality - I don't see that here. The word choice alone is a hint.

What you thus get is not news, it's interpretation in a certain light, and if I want that I'll read the Sun (not that I ever would but it's to illustrate just how much I loath a journalist going soapbox).

I use 3 platforms (and an very old Nokia 6310), and I have yet to find a compelling reason to label the users of any other platform as x, y or z. Reporting, yes, inflicting your biases on your audience quickly gets irritating.

Oh, and as for iOS 7, I appreciate the control centre and the fact that I can block individual users (as long as they don't call with number hidden, of course), but I'm on the fence on the design.

24 months is still a joke - Apple support their stuff for much longer - so part of the increased sales of Android devices is the fact many are effectively junked after 12-18-24 months whereas iDevices are still going at 3-4+ years (probably about twice as long on average).

Remember "iPhone 4S fans ruin 3G, calls, texts for EVERYONE"?

Not this Apple-spin masquerading as news again.

1. Quite frankly, who cares - if you want to run the latest Android version, get a Nexus. Otherwise, stop complaining.

2. Remember what happens when the latest IOS is pushed out without the service providers being able to test it?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/11/vodafone_ios6_1_software_problem/ - "iPhone 4S fans ruin 3G, calls, texts for EVERYONE"

3. When Apple release an update, features are still disabled on older phones. So it's misleading to say that all these phones are running "IOS 7", when that may be different operating systems on different phones. On WP, they labelled them differently (WP 7.8 vs 8). On Android, yes it might be a bit more annoying that older phones may not get a newer OS at all, but if they're not capable of running the new features, it's not much difference. Also remember that most Android phones don't run vanilla Android, so comparing Android versions is misleading, instead they run OSs that go on a different release schedule (e.g., a Samsung S4 is already running the latest version of TouchWiz - whatever Android version it's based on. Similarly I don't know if Android 4.3 uses the latest Linux version, but even if it didn't, that doesn't mean my Nexus isn't running the latest OS version, because it doesn't run plain Linux).

4. Let's compare on when different platforms get features, rather than an arbitrary thing like "OS version". Since Android phones already had the IOS 7 features months or years ago, who cares?

Point 2 is a particular issue. If it was just the case that it caused problems for iphones, well you've got the tradeoff between quick updates and full testing, where it's a matter of opinion which balance is best. But when it comes to messing things for *other people* that's inexcusable.

I'm worried that Apple are still allowed to push the updates out despite the risk to other users, and if nothing else, it's a double standard if they are allowed to do this, but other platforms still have to be held up by the networks.

And it's also sad that people are still spinning this as a plus point for Apple, when it has this known risk to *other users*.

Re: During the meanwhile ...

Who cares?

Re: During the meanwhile ...

Beeelions....

Re: Stats Pedant

That's not what they said. They said that of the devices that access the web, 50% of them run IOS7. Unique devices, not aggregated traffic.

You're correct that not all devices regularly connect to the web, but there's no strong reason to assume that running iOS6 or iOS7 is statistically significant in whether or not the device owner will browse the web, so the inference they draw (that the web-browsing section of the userbase is representative of the whole) is still reasonably valid.

The reason for such high adoption is basically that firstly, there are no carrier-customised builds of iOS, so one build can go onto every device, and second: an iPhone is more likely to be hooked up to a PC regularly, because of its symbiotic relationship with the execrable iTunes, and this makes users more likely to know that an update is available. Third, Apple publicise their phone OS releases to an extent that Google or MS do not - outside of the tech-press bubble, I'm willing to bet that more people will have heard of "iOS7" than "Android Jellybean" or "Windows Phone 8 GDR3"

Re: Stats Pedant

Or equally possibly >50%, impossible to say. We can opine about it perhaps but as IOS and android are probably about on a par in terms of average usage levels 50% is as good a yardstick as any.

Unless of course we have strong citations that IOS devices are used for browsing more or less web traffic than Android ones.

Apple users 'use' their devices more (on average) so they are aware of the update and want the new features / look.

Re: It's cause they're dying for a change

I hate to point this out to you, but market research shows more people jumping TOO Apple than away from it. Market share data ignores the facts that (1) the market is increasing in size dramatically and (2) much of the new market is in bargain basement devices that are free on contract to subscribers who should have otherwise chosen a dumb or feature phone.

Most Apple users were perfectly happy with iOS 6, and more than likely there's going to be some backlash because they didn't want it to change. Personally I'm on the whole happy with it (particularly features like being able to tell it just to get on and auto-upgrade apps without bothering me) but you shouldn't confuse the wants and likes of tech bloggers with the core audience.

Yeah sure you have an iPad :S

iOS 7.0.2 is out already and solves a few of the initial buglets.

Re: 50% of US users?

It's not - the other half could be running devices that cannot be upgraded or are waiting for the inevitable initial bugs to be ironed out. But 7.0.2 is actually out - so suspect many will have been resolved and we're only just over a week from launch.