Most of iOS users stay up-to-date while Android users go obsolete too long

According to the stats provided by a prominent iOS app developer users of iOS based devices are much faster to update their operating system unlike users of Android gadgets. Inasmuch as Apple does not release official data of how many people run the various versions of its mobile OS David Lieb, chief executive of Bump, the app that allows you to swap data with other users by bumping two devices together, says that its download and usage base (estimated at around 15 million downloads) makes it for a representative sample of iOS users.

The figures from the Bump show that 89.73% of the app's iOS users are running iOS 4.X, with just 10.25 percent stuck with the older iOS 3.X (pre-multitasking). Of 4.X users 52.89% run iOS 4.2.1 and more than a quarter (27.5 percent) run iOS 4.1. iOS 4.2.1 was publicly introduced in November 2010, meaning that a significant number of iOS users are already running the latest version of the OS available.

In contrast according to Google’s data only 0.4% of users run Android 2.3 publicly launched in December. Meantime, 51.8% of devices run Android 2.2 and 35.2% are still on Android 2.1, introduced in January 2010.

However such a fragmentation cannot be entirely assigned to Google’s negligence. It is rather a policy of wireless carriers and phone makers. Google is licensing Android free to device manufacturers, which then customize the OS to their liking. Phone makers in turn prefer to hold back new features on older phones in order to sell more new devices.