iPhone OS 3.0 Adoption Rate
I decided to spend a few minutes looking through the Converbot logs to see what kind of 3.0 upgrade rate we are seeing. I expected to see a fairly good upgrade rate but the numbers I saw are really way above my expectations. To keep a long story short, 5 days after the iPhone OS 3.0 release, we are seeing a 75% adoption rate. Read on below for some graphs and analysis.
The Data
When Convertbot launches, it grabs the latest currency conversion data from our server. Using the headers that Apple includes as part of every HTTP request and a couple extra ones that we throw in for reporting purposes we are able to see unique requests by OS and device version through each day of June. The average number of requests per day is ~3250. The number of iPhone devices is about 6 times greater then the number of iPod Touches. I also filtered out anyone not running Converbot 1.3 and then normalized each day’s numbers so that each day adds up to 100%. The reason I filtered out anyone running an older version is because those folks aren’t likely to be impacted by changing Convertbot to 3.0 only.
The Graphs
The data seems pretty clear. Prior to June 8th we have a fairly low adoption rate of ~3%. Starting on June 9 this jumps up to 6-8%, which can be directly tracked to the developer release at WWDC. Starting on June 17th we get a huge jump as all the non devs start upgrading. We’re currently running at an overall 75% upgrade rate which is pretty insane considering the number of devices and the fact that its only been 5 days.
Overall Upgrade Rates
This graph adds up both the iPhone and iPod devices and just measures overall upgrade rate for both devices.
iPhone Upgrade Rate
Given how many more iPhone devices there are vs iPod Touches it isn’t very surprising that this graph looks fairly similar to the Overall graph. The iPhone upgrade rate is a bit higher then the overall rate, currently sitting at 79%.
iPod Touch Upgrade Rate
This is somewhat more interesting and shows the impact of that annoying $10 fee that Apple charges for upgrades. While the iPhone upgrade is almost 80% the iPod Touch has just passed 50%.
Conclusion
It’s somewhat early to draw an overall market conclusion from our single sample. It’s pretty clear that at least our customers are upgrading to 3.0 at an incredibly fast pace. We’ll be keeping an eye over the next couple weeks and will update this post as needed with newer numbers. As I said before we don’t currently have any plans to make Convertbot or Weightbot 3.0 only, though they both have been submitted to Apple with some minor 3.0 bug fixes (which are still pending approval). However, our third app will be 3.0 only, as will anything else we do after that. So if you haven’t upgraded yet, what are you waiting for?
Quick Update
To answer some of the questions that have been asked in the comments. The Convertbot 1.3 update rate is ~87%, if you add in folks running 1.2 that goes up to ~94%. There are a few folks still running the original 1.0 version which I find quite interesting. If you add in the folks running all the older versions we are looking at 70-71% as far as the conversion rates to 3.0 goes. And for those folks running the older version the OS 3.0 conversion rate is only ~37%.
Thanks for sharing this information â it’s quite interesting to see the iPod compare to the iPhone as well, with its paid upgrade model.
Glad to have contributed to the 3% of 3.0 Convertbot users before WWDC :)
Fantastic- I’m considering going 3.0-only in our next major release, the iPod Touch numbers are a little daunting- Do you know if we’re able to serve separate versions to the different OSs? ie. those on OS 2 are frozen into the current version?
Very interesting to see – My current app works on all devices but the one I am working on now will be 3.0 only as it will heavily use a few of the new APIs.
I’m glad Apple made it easy for existing iPhone customers to upgrade. The upgrade price for the iPod touch is annoying but 50% in 5 days is still impressive.
Personally I will go 3.0 only for all of my apps throughout the coming weeks.
One interesting thing though, is that by eliminating users of the older Convertbot versions you’re removing a certain type of low-tech user. They will likely have slower OS 3 adoption rate.
Do these users represent a large portion of the toal?
It’s amazing to see that with a single app that might be on only 10% of the devices, we can still have pretty accurate data. Here’s a hypotheses about why 20% iPhone users aren’t using OS 3.0 considering the fact that it’s free to them.
I think that a big part of them use jailbroken iPhones. We’ll see if that true in the following days if we see a little bounce in the upgrade rate since the jailbreak is now released. The remaining 2.0 users would be the one with slower internet access (like dial-up) so they can’t do the upgrade easily.
What do you think?
Matt W asks an interesting question. I guess the next question is: How long has the latest CovertBot version been out? If it’s only been a couple weeks, this says one thing. If it’s been a month or two, this says something else.
Happy to say that I was in the 3% too ;)
Thanks for the really interesting numbers.
Thanks for sharing your data. Iâd be very interested in knowing the upgrade rate to Convertbot 1.3.
Users who have upgraded to the newest Convertbot are also likely to upgrade their firmware, Iâd think, and thatâs what your data shows. But if only a fraction of your users have upgraded to the newest Convertbot, then that could still leave most users with firmware 2.x.
For what itâs worth, Deep Green will be 3.0 only from next major release.
This is the biggest advantage Apple has over everybody else. A simple way for end-users to upgrade the OS of their existing device to gain new features combined with a company that is willing to actually provide significant updates.
Google/Android is getting the hint, and we’ll have to wait and see if Palm can live long enough to do the same, but everybody else still has their head in the sand. RIM and Nokia, the other major players in the smartphone market, both prefer user’s buy new phones instead of providing a software upgrade for an existing phone.
And Microsoft is screwed, because they actively hamper this ability by charging manufacturers for new versions of the OS (hell, they might even charge for the manufacturer to provide bug-fix releases).
FYI: Note that there is no real reason that you should have to go 3.0 only. It is possible to ship a single binary that will work on multiple versions of the OS. Just set the SDK to 3.0, and the deployment target to 2.2.1, and check for 3.0 features at runtime:
That last comment should have included this link
you can see the price impacts the iPod touch ratesâ¦Â I’m glad to be one of the few with 3.0 before the huge bump :) GM seed ftw
I had no idea that ConvertBot sends this kind of data at start while it downloadsâ¦Â you’re watching usâ¦
Interesting stats, especially for Touch users.
Thanks for sharing the stats!
I’d love to see similar stats for Mac OS X users after major upgrades (e.g. 10.4 > 10.5), but I don’t know who (outside of Apple, Adobe or the Microsoft MBU) would be in a position to collect such data in a statistically significant way. And somehow I can’t imagine any of those folks sharing it with the rest of the dev community for free! :)
As a Touch user, I would also point out that the upgrade does not have as many benefits. Key apps like MMS, Voice Memos, and Internet Tethering (to name a few) are simply not functional.
So not only do we get to pay for the privilege, but we also get fewer goodies.
How many people downgraded to XP?
The blog entry that Clark unsuccessfully tried to provide twice is very, very helpful. I’ve linked my name in this comment to it.
Once again, a reminder. Apple must charge under Sarbanes-Oxley rules. You cannot offer a new feature for free; it’s a violation of US accounting law. Don’t like it? Get the gov to fix it. Now is the time for change, right?
I have not updated my iPod touch yet. I am not holing back because of the $10 upgrade price, but because comments in the iTunes store for several Apps I really like say that those apps don’t work right in 3.0. When the apps get updated to work in 3.0, I’m there.
This is very interesting. As David said above, we at Morfunk will be going 3.0-only soon; I’d much rather use CoreData than maintain my own database object APIs with everything that entails (uniquing, I/O coalescing, schema management, etc.).
I’ll also have to show this post to some of my clients; I’ve spoken to people who don’t believe it will be worth targeting OS 3.0 until next year at the earliest.
I’m curious too what the numbers are like for all Convertbot users. How many haven’t upgraded to 1.3? (Basically: How many are just generally conservative with the upgrades…)
To Grover:
you wanted Internet tethering with your Touch?
What Internet did you want to tether?
You did also realize that the iPhone & iPod touch already had MMS via applications AND that pics can be emailed to phone numbers.
Finally … The addition of cut copy paste is worth $10 alone.
I added a small update to answer some of the questions above.
@Nick Forge
Adium collects stats for 300000 users at adium . im/sparkle/ (remove the spaces)
50% of iPod touch users * $10 is not exactly pocket change. The last hard number I recall is 13 million as of March. 50% * 13M * $10 = $65 million dollars. Not bad for a single week.
Today on our non iphone-related site around 40% of new iphone visitors are on 3.0. The rest are on 2.2.1 with a few stragglers on 2.2.
What I am wondering about: Once your app is 3.0 only, what will the user experience be for someone who has not upgraded but would like to purchase your app?
Will they still get the last appropriate version for the Appstore, will they only see the new app and be told they need to upgrade their device or will they simply not see your app exists since it is not suitable for them?
Behaviour is probably different buying from iTunes and from the device.
Anybody has any insights to share on this?
Unrelated comment why people might still run your very old version: the iPhone is mainstream, so there also are users who have not been into Gadgets before and who are absolutely no tech guys. Some people may not even have their own iTunes but someone who initially set up their phone or iPod and installed a number of apps for them. (But of course, strategically no need to consider these guys as they don’t buy themselves. Just keep the web service compatible.)
Paul, thanks for sharing your interesting numbers!
So really, “Overall update rate” is “Relevant iPod+iPhone update rate”…
Iphone still rules.
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing this with the rest of us.
This is very cool data, thanks very much for sharing it!
I’m just making some updates to my app that make use of 3.0, and I’m wondering how much 2.x support to provide. I’d love to base this on some idea of where 3.0’s uptake is now (July 20th). I think a lot of my users are on the Touch, so that’s just as interesting as the iPhone for me.
Any chance of an update to the numbers above (just a number, really, as I should think it’s levelled off by now) :-)
Thanks!
I’ve googled for this, after getting a few complains about going 3.0-only… It sucks that old versions don’t stay available on the store.
As far as this data is concerned. Are these individual devices? If the app tries to connect on every launch, it will succeed on iPhones more frequently than on Touches. That means iPods are likely underrepresented in this statistic.
Why should I be nice?
I have a brand new 3G which will not update to 3.0, even if I wanted to.
Now you have gone against your words in this blog, and updated Weightbot so that it is a 3.0 only app… only several days after I purchased it.
That’s not nice.
Thank you for sharing this research.
This will make the decision if we should go for OS 3.0 only much easier.
It is an awesome function. I love my new i Phone so much!
How does the OS 3 adoption rate look like 3 months later, according to your stats?
I want iPhone OS 3.0 Adoption
Now that we are half a year into OS 3 being out, I’d be interested in seeing your current stats. Ours are running around 99.3% OS3 iPhones and 91% OS3 iPod Touches.