Let’s Keep an Eye on Apple’s Own iOS Adoption Numbers

When I wrote last week about the false narrative that iOS 26 is seeing bizarrely low adoption rates compared to previous years, I neglected one source: Apple itself. Apple’s Developer site publishes a page with iOS and iPadOS usage for devices that “transacted on the App Store”.

The hitch is that they only seem to update those numbers twice a year — once right around now, and once again right before WWDC. As of today, those numbers are still from 4 June 2025. Last year, going from the Internet Archive, the numbers were still from iOS 17 (June 2024) on 23 January last year, but were updated for iOS 18 on 24 January. Here are those iOS 18 numbers from one year ago this week.

iPhones released in the previous four years:

  • iOS 18: 76%
  • iOS 17: 19%
  • iOS < 17: 5%

All iPhones:

  • iOS 18: 68%
  • iOS 17: 19%
  • iOS < 17: 13%

iPads released in the previous four years:

  • iPadOS 18: 63%
  • iPadOS 17: 27%
  • iPadOS < 17: 10%

All iPads:

  • iPadOS 18: 53%
  • iPadOS 17: 28%
  • iPadOS < 17: 19%

(Apple itself manages to present these statistics without ever using the plurals iPhones or iPads, instead referring only to “devices”.)

I presume, or at least hope, that they’ll update these numbers for iOS 26 any day now.

★ Thursday, 29 January 2026