It is now close to two weeks since Apple released the iPhone OS 3.1. and according to a new report published by the mobile advertising network AdMob, only 23% of iPhone users have already upgraded to the new iPhone OS 3.1 based on the ad requests coming from iPhone OS devices.
For the report, AdMob studied the operating system from where ad requests came from for the period September 15-22. This included requests from both the iPhone and iPod touch users. AdMob claims that over 51% of the iPhone and iPod Touch users were still on iPhone OS 3.0. What is more interesting is that close to a fifth of the users (19%) are still on iPhone OS 2.2.1. Another 1 in 15 users are still on the versions lesser than iPhone OS 2.2!
If there was any doubt over how the fee of $4.95 would have affected iPod Touch users willing to upgrade to iPhone OS 3.1, it must become clear now with this report which states that out of all requests, close to 91% of iPhone users had 3.0 or 3.1 versions installed on their phones whereas the corresponding statistic for iPod Touch users was a mere 35%!
From Apple's perspective, an adoption rate of a mere 23% is not good enough after two weeks post-release. In my opinion, the warning from Dev Team to jailbreakers and unlockers to avoid iPhone OS 3.1, the problems reported by users after upgrading to iPhone OS 3.1 and the lack of any major functionality other than has resulted in poor adoption of iPhone OS 3.1. It will be interesting to see if yesterday's launch of MMS feature by AT&T for it's iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS customers, which strangely required iPhone OS 3.1 will increase it's adoption.
As for the iPod Touch users, it looks like a bad idea to have imposed a $4.95 fee for their upgrades. Having said that, it is unfair to draw conclusions here since AdMob's report does not reveal the whole picture. Maybe a similar report from Apple would help, something that is pretty unlikely to happen.
Have you upgraded to iPhone OS 3.1? If you haven't upgraded, please tell us the reason for not upgrading to iPhone OS 3.1 in the comments.
[via AdMob]
