iOS 6 Adoption Up 29% After Google Maps Hits App Store

Google Maps was released for iOS on December 12, and in the five days after it hit the App Store, ad management platform MoPub noticed a 29 percent increase in unique iOS 6 users.

The data from MoPub, which supports 12,000 apps and monitors 1 billion ad impressions daily, suggests that quite a few iDevice owners were waiting for a better mapping solution before upgrading to Apple's newest operating system.

ios6adoptiongrowth
TechCrunch spoke to MoPub CEO Jim Payne, who had this to say:

"We observed since the launch of Google Maps for iOS 6 a 30 percent increase in unique iOS 6 users, and we think it's related to Google Maps. It verifies that hypothesis that people were actually holding back to upgrade until Google Maps was available."

MoPub's data does, however, conflict with another report from mobile ad network Chitika, which saw just a 0.2 percentage point increase in iOS 6 users in the first 36 hours of Google Maps availability. MoPub seems to include a wider set of data than Chitika and which was taken over a longer period of time, and MoPub's inclusion of weekend data in particular seems to have contributed significantly to the observed increase in adoption, as people may have been waiting to do the lengthy update to iOS 6.

An increased iOS 6 adoption rate following the launch of Google Maps not only benefits Google, but also Apple, which naturally wants as many users as possible on its latest operating system version. With Google's mapping solution now taking some of the pressure off of Apple's own flawed product, one major reason holding some users back from updating to iOS 6 has been addressed.

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Top Rated Comments

nepalisherpa Avatar
163 months ago
Could it be that more people are buying iPhone 5/new iPads (which come with iOS 6 to begin with) for holiday gifts?
Score: 33 Votes (Like | Disagree)
thekris1234 Avatar
163 months ago
Ironic that the developer of a platform with slow adoption rates can cause the adoption rate of a rival platform to surge.
Score: 29 Votes (Like | Disagree)
voyagerd Avatar
163 months ago
Insufficient data needed for analysis.
Score: 28 Votes (Like | Disagree)
notjustjay Avatar
163 months ago
Well, I can tell you that I was one of them. I didn't want to upgrade to iOS 6 until suitable replacement apps for YouTube and Google Maps were available.
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
mathcolo Avatar
163 months ago
Ironic that the developer of a platform with slow adoption rates can cause the adoption rate of a rival platform to surge.

Your statement isn't really factually accurate—1.3 million Android devices are being activated every day. I wouldn't call that "slow" :confused:
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
gmanist1000 Avatar
163 months ago
Google needs to add:

* Contacts integration!
* Night mode
Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)