Mixpanel: iOS 7.1 spotted in over quarter of iPhone, iPad app traffic

PanARMENIAN.Net - Four days after Apple released an update to its mobile operating system, more than a quarter of app traffic is coming from iPhones and iPads running the latest software, analytics firm Mixpanel said, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Apple released iOS 7.1—the first major update to its mobile software since its debut in September—on Monday. The update addressed some of the major complaints users had with the software including the tendency to crash and reboot often and the unreliability of its fingerprint sensor for its iPhone 5S. As of Friday, March 14, Mixpanel said 26.4% of app traffic is coming over devices running iOS 7.1, slightly less than the 31.5% usage rate for its previous version, iOS 7.0.6.

While this doesn’t mean that 26.4% of iOS devices have the update installed—people who use more apps more of the time may be earlier to adopt upgrades, after all—but it shows momentum, especially compared to the competition. About 6% of app traffic on Google’s Android operating system stems from “KitKat,” the latest version of the software released in October, Mixpanel said, according to the Journal.

The data underscores one of Apple’s biggest advantages over Google Inc.’s Android operating system. Since Apple controls both the hardware and software, users of its mobile devices upgrade to the latest version of the iOS operating system quickly.

This makes life easier for developers because they can create apps knowing that a large percentage of iPhone users will be running the latest software. The phone manufacturers who use Android often customize the software to their own requirements, causing delays for users of those phones to have access to the latest updates from Google.