On July 22nd Chitika advertising network published a report revealing that Apple’s latest mobile operating system, iOS 4, was already accounting for 50% of all iPhone web traffic only one month after being officially released. But what’s the status today?

The most recent source I could found is dated September 13th but refers to the adoption rate and only considers a 2 weeks span in order to make the point that iPhone users were supposedly slower to update their OS then Motorola Droid users immediately after the OS update release.

The sure thing is that in 1 month 50% of the users upgraded to iOS 4, so it’s very likely that a few months later most users upgraded their device. However, Apple’s iOS 4.0 caused trouble to iPhone 3G owners, and that added to the overall buzz around the iPhone 4 “antennagate” might have slowed down the adoption rate.

Once again, what’s the status today?
You wanted numbers, not theories, when googling for this right?
Here are them.

We have integrated Flurry analytics in a handful of our apps to help us collect data such as user retention and technical data that help us deciding what iOS and devices to support in our future releases.

I’ll share with you data coming from our free Night Prayer app and from our popular Prayer HD and Compendium HD apps.

Flurry Analytics iOS and iDevice Models Percentages, September/October 2010

Compline, audio night prayer, is an app we didn’t update for a while and still runs a Flurry SDK that collects data correctly. It is an ad supported app and was downloaded an average of 90 times per day during Q3/2010.

In the last 30 days over 95% of the sessions were made through an iOS 4 capable device (iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G, iPod Touch 2nd generation and later). Only 2.5% of the sessions came from original iPhones and iPods Touch. iPad sessions were 1.4%.

Looking at the operating system version in the last 30 days, 70% of the sessions were made from an iOS 4 powered device, 25% from an iOS 3 device and 5% from iOS 3.2.x (that’s iPad specific).

Prayer and Compendium are Universal apps that run great on iPhone, iPod Touch and also include an iPad specific user interface, beautifully designed by Ney under the supervision of Renato and Rafael, our Design team leaders. Together, the apps get about 100 downloads per day.

These apps use Flurry SDK 2.6 which unfortunately does not recognize OS versions correctly, so I can only share device model data, that is rather interesting anyway. An amazing 98% of the sessions came from iOS 4 capable devices (over 80% iPhone 4, less then 9% from iPhone 3GS, less then 5% from iPhone 3G). iPad represents a bit less then 2% of the last 30 days sessions. You can easily guess that non-iOS4-capable devices account for less then 1% of the sessions.

Conclusions

To me it’s pretty clear from the data that original iPhone, iPod Touch and iPhone 3G users have been upgrading their hardware, rather then their software. Who hasn’t done so yet, will for sure upgrade in 2011 when the iPhone 5 will be introduced.

The iPad is currently running a tailored version of iOS 3 (3.2.2), which is exclusive to the iPad. With the November release of iOS 4.2 introducing amazing features for Apple’s tablet like multitasking, over-the-air printing and possibly a new incarnation of iLife, I do not see many iPad users sticking with the older OS.

If you’re starting to develop your app today and are looking at deploying it on the App Store in a few months, I suggest to go for iOS 4 only and to make sure your app supports iOS 4.2 that is due in November.

We decided not to support iOS 3 in the next major releases of all our apps.
Prayer and Compendium were written long ago and are still not using Core Data. They will undergo a total rewrite sooner then later, and as I said, with iOS 4.2 coming in November to over 95% of the iDevices, supporting older devices and versions is not worth the added development and testing effort.

I’d be happy to hear your opinion, especially if you disagree or have different data coming out of your own apps! :)