Apple Podcasts Points To Successful iOS 17 Adoption

With the launch of iOS 17, Apple changed the methodology behind podcast downloads with the launch of iOS 17, and there’s a curious side effect. We can see how popular iOS 17 is. Apple Airpods (Photo by Thomas Samson/AFP via Getty Images) The update to Apple’s podcast app changed the auto downloading of podcast episodes , a change that has hit podcast download numbers across the board.

The team at Livewire.io have been tracking the impact of the switch to iOS 17 and the different statistics generated by the updated podcast app. The data has another helpful side effect. Tracking the difference between iOS 16 and iOS 17 also means tracking iOS 16 and iOS 17 installations. The various points of iOS 17’s life can be seen from the long period in public beta, through the launch of iOS 17 and the iPhone 15 family, and into the holidays.

The middle of November saw a significant increase in iOS 17’s market share. This tied into the release of iOS 17.1.1, although as this was purely a bugfix, it was unlikely to impact the numbers directly. What is more likely is that the interest and coverage of iOS 17.1 as a whole—which launched on October 25th—saw a rush of older iPhones being updated.

The number of updates stabilised at the start of December with a much slower rate of adoption of iOS 17. And on December 31st, iOS 17 passed a 75 percent share. Now read the latest iPhone, iOS, and Mac headlines in Forbes’ weekly Apple Loop news digest....