New in OS X: Get MacRumors Push Notifications on your Mac

Resubscribe Now Close

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

Wednesday December 19, 2012 12:49 pm PST by Juli Clover
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.


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.
[ 148 comments ]


Top Rated Comments

(View all)

Avatar
nepalisherpa
77 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?
Rating: 33 Votes
Avatar
thekris1234
77 months ago
Ironic that the developer of a platform with slow adoption rates can cause the adoption rate of a rival platform to surge.
Rating: 29 Votes
Avatar
voyagerd
77 months ago
Insufficient data needed for analysis.
Rating: 28 Votes
Avatar
mathcolo
77 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:
Rating: 14 Votes
Avatar
notjustjay
77 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.
Rating: 14 Votes
Avatar
gmanist1000
77 months ago
Google needs to add:

* Contacts integration!
* Night mode
Rating: 13 Votes
Avatar
SuperBrown
77 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.


That makes 3 of us. My friend and I also have yet to upgrade to iOS6, but I'll likely do so soon now for this exact reason.
Rating: 9 Votes
Avatar
WildCowboy
77 months ago

Your statement isn't really factually accurate—1.3 million Android devices are being activated every day. I wouldn't call that "slow" :confused:


I think he was addressing Android upgrade data. Less than 7% (http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html) of Android devices are currently using Jelly Bean.
Rating: 9 Votes
Avatar
ArtOfWarfare
77 months ago

Your statement isn't really factually accurate—1.3 million Android devices are being activated every day. I wouldn't call that "slow" :confused:


He's referring to the fact that over 50% of Android devices are still running an OS Google released over two years ago. As an Android Developer, it sucks because it means if you want to support more than 50% of the market, you have to restrict yourself to using APIs that were available when Google released Gingerbread 2 years ago.
Rating: 9 Votes
Avatar
Brian Y
77 months ago
Unless I'm seeing things differently:

Wed-Thur: gradient far less than Tue-Wed
Thur-Fri: gradient about the same as Tue-Wed
Fri-Sat: gradient steeper than Tue-Wed, which is normal since more people will be at home to update. That, and more people will buy new phones at the weekend.

That graph, if anything, shows the exact opposite to what this article is suggesting.
Rating: 7 Votes

[ Read All Comments ]