Apple Users Adopting iOS 6 122% Faster Than iOS 5 After Two Days

We reported earlier that iOS 6 first day adoption was high, but new information provided to TechCrunch by mobile analytics company Apsalar shows that over time, users are definitely picking it up much faster than previous versions. The company sees a lower overall adoption rate on day one than either Chartboost or Chitika, but the numbers show a rapid increase in user adoption over time.

iOS 6 is an over-the-air update, meaning it’s much easier for people to move from previous versions to this one, so long as they already have iOS 5 installed. And unlike Google with Android, Apple pushes out its updates to all of its iPhone and iPad users at more or less the same time. All of those factors, along with a hype machine designed to build anticipation for new features that roll out with each update, seem to be contributing to a quick move toward platform saturation. Apsalar’s sample pool is considerable, too, with 2.2 million devices for its iOS 5 data, and 6.3 million for iOS 6.

That’s great news for developers, who benefit from having all users of a platform on the same page, since they can focus on developing just for one OS version and drop support for older ones more quickly. Some developers I know who work on iOS have even adopted an approach of rapid obsolescence, so they can retain extra lean development workflows and shorten turnaround times for new versions, and Apple’s increasingly impressive ability to get everyone on the same page should make that kind of strategy even more popular.

One developer is reporting much higher rates of adoption for iOS 6 after 48 hours, at almost 30 percent according to MobileSyrup. Specific numbers are bound to vary, but they’re all telling the same story: people are upgrading, and fast.