Apple Intelligence did not boost iOS 18 adoption

Apple introducing features of iOS 18 in 2024 — image credit: Apple

While the figures are close, Apple’s announced adoption rate for iOS 18 puts it just below the average for the last decade’s releases — even though Apple Intelligence was supposed to boost its popularity.

By January 2025, iOS 18 appeared to be ahead of its predecessor, reaching 76% of all compatible iPhones a month before iOS 17 did the year before. Even that figure was perhaps surprisingly low, however, since Tim Cook had announced vastly faster upgrading at the start in October 2024.

“[This is a] really early stat, which is only three days worth of data,” he said at the time, “but users are adopting iOS 18.1 at twice the rate that they adopted 17.1 in the year ago quarter.”

“It’s a combination that 15 was stronger than 14 in the year… and 16 was stronger than 15,” he continued. “Plus, keep in mind that the 15 Pro and Pro Max also run Apple Intelligence.”

Now Apple has announced what is expected to be its final account of iOS 18 adoption. The company says that iOS 18 is currently installed on 82% of all compatible iPhones.

Comparing ten years of iOS

In announcing that figure, Apple said that this adoption rate is down to its users being aware of the benefits of updating, plus how simple the company has made it to update.

Comparing Apple’s own figures from the last ten years, however, iOS 18 comes in at just under the average of 83.2%. The specific figures from 2015’s iOS 8 to 2025’s iOS 18 for all compatible iPhones are:

• 2015 iOS 8: 84%
• 2016 iOS 9: 84%
• 2017 iOS 10: 86%
• 2018 iOS 11: 81%
• 2019 iOS 12: 87%
• 2020 iOS 13: 81%
• 2021 iOS 14: 90%
• 2022 iOS 15: 82%
• 2023 iOS 16: 81%
• 2024 iOS 17: 77%
• 2025 iOS 18: 82%

So in the last decade, iOS 14 saw the highest adoption rate with 90%. Then iOS 17 scored the lowest with 77%.

These figures were taken from Apple’s own listings on its developer.apple.com site, which periodically measures adoption rate through user access of the App Store. Over the decade, the most comparable measurements were recorded at various dates from late May to mid-June.

Apple splits out adoption rates into two sets

Apple does not publish further detail such as the adoption of point releases like 18.1, 18.2, and so on. However, since 2019, the company has separately recorded the iOS adoption rate for iPhones released in the previous four years.

It’s not clear why it introduced this, or why it chose four years, but the figures do not materially help iOS 18’s case.

Using only this last-four-years data from Apple in 2019, the average adoption rate is 87.9%. That means iOS 18’s figure of 88% is just 0.1% above the average.

The minimum adoption rate during this period and for this range of iPhones is 85%, which was achieved by both iOS 12 and iOS 14. The maximum was 92% for iOS 13.

Curiously, across these six years, the latest iPhones did not always saw a greater rate of adoption than that for all iPhones. In 2021, iOS 14’s rate for these latest iPhones was 5% lower than all iPhones, at 85%. In 2019, iOS 12 was 2% behind all iPhones, also at 85%.

The complete list of Apple’s figures for “all devices introduced in the last four years,” since the company released such data, is:

• 2019 iOS 12: 85%
• 2020 iOS 13: 92%
• 2021 iOS 14: 85%
• 2022 iOS 15: 89%
• 2023 iOS 16: 90%
• 2024 iOS 17: 86%
• 2025 iOS 18: 88%

Overall, iOS adoption rate for all compatible devices is reasonably steady, having never fallen below 77% in the last ten years, and never rising above 90%.

By comparison, figures from Talk Android in May 2025 claim that only 4.5% of Android phones are on the latest OS.

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