It's official: iOS 7 dominated 2013
We've been scanning the iOS version distribution data from Chitika since iOS 7 first launched in September, watching with amazement as the latest mobile operating system from Apple quickly pulled down almost 50 percent adoption within a month of release. Now Chitika has released findings for the end of 2013, showing that iOS 7 is now installed on close to 70 percent of all iOS devices, and that iOS 7 and iOS 6 combined account for about 90 percent of all North American iOS traffic.
By comparison -- and we always love to point out the Android OS fragmentation issue when we can -- the latest two versions of Android (KitKat and Jelly Bean) account for a little more than 55 percent of its installed base now. The absolute latest version of Android, version 4.4 KitKat? It's only grabbing 1.1 percent of the total for Android as of December 2.
Breaking down the numbers even further, it appears that a greater percentage of iPhones have made the iOS 7 plunge than iPads. For all iPhones, 74.1 percent are running iOS 7, with 22.4 percent operating on iOS 6. The numbers for iPads are lower, with iOS 7 achieving a 63.8 percent adoption rate and iOS 6 close behind at 24.6 percent. Chitika postulates that "the lower adoption rate of iOS 7 is likely at least partially due to features like AirDrop not coming to the iPad 2 or 3, minimizing the incentive for users of those devices to upgrade."
