Apple posted iOS 18 adoption rates on Friday, which are only slightly different from the numbers for iOS 17 a year ago. The company says iOS 18 has been installed on 68 percent of all iPhones (as of January 21) and 76 percent of models from the last four years.
A year ago, 66 percent of all iPhones ran iOS 17, so there’s a two-percent uptick for iOS 18 this year. The other stat was identical to today’s data: 76 percent of iPhones from the previous four years were running iOS 17 in January 2024.
iPad owners aren’t moving any needles dramatically, either. Apple says 53 percent of all iPads are running iPadOS 18 (the same as iPadOS 17 a year ago). And 63 percent of the tablets from the last four years run iPadOS 18. That’s a notch above the 61 percent of devices from the previous four years running iPadOS 17 early last year.
Does the minor boost come from Apple Intelligence wooing a few extra curious adopters? Unfortunately, the company is mum about how many people have opted into its suite of generative AI features.
Regardless, we can speculate that Apple wants Apple Intelligence adoption to grow: In the latest iOS 18.3 beta, Apple is enabling its AI features by default during onboarding. (You can still opt out after that, but you have to dig into settings to do so.) In previous versions, it was an opt-in feature you had to explicitly agree to during setup. That software could arrive as early as next week.
